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Many told us that the Protectors had drastically reduced the crime rate, and some other immigrants from different asteroids stated that dealing with them was preferable to most of the governments they had previously lived under.  We weren't accosted by anyone else, though whether that was due to the Guilds keeping the criminal element under control or whether that was the weapons we were now openly carrying I do not know.  Still, I got the impression that many of the people we asked weren't telling us everything.\n\tEventually we pieced together the story of Vesta's controlled anarchy.  After the revolution the inhabitants of Vesta, which had extensive mines and worker barracks but minimal supervision, decided to embrace the concept of anarchy, no rulers.  The nutrient algae vending machines were hacked so that anyone could add their biometric data to the system and receive a daily allotment of calories from the machines, the fabricators were open to use by anyone who felt they needed something.  If there was a shortage of fabricator materials or some of the life support systems began to malfunction or the algae went bad someone would fix the problem.  If someone went crazy and started killing people they figured that an angry mob would drag him to the nearest airlock.  Inevitably this turned out to not be the case.  air scrubbers crapped out leaving entire sectors unlivable at a rate that overwhelmed the few people who had the initiative to fix them, infected algae was ignored until the food became toxic, and psychopaths found ways to murder people with no witnesses to form mobs.  The tipping point came, ironically enough, when some people who were concerned about the degradation of the habitat organized and began working to fix the various problems full time.  This group, known as the Repairman's Guild, initially suffered from a lack of manpower to resolve all the broken pieces of the habitat, until they came up with the idea of offering their members extra food rations.  At first this extra food came from algae trays and hydroponics farms maintained by the Guild itself and voluntary donations from grateful civilians.  But as time passed they needed more and more workers, and many Guilders assigned to collecting donations started to use physical force to intimidate people into giving up their food.  This led to many people becoming malnourished, and some resorted to stealing food from others, during this time the Protector's Guild formed, and refused to aid anyone who didn't \"donate\" to them, and even more people starved as a result of their taking of yet more of the food.  Some people tried to avoid giving away their rations by offering resources they had mined or items they had fabricated or services that they could provide, after some initial incidents the Guilds decided that they would accept payments other  than food rations which convinced many people to find things that they could produce.  Eventually so many people were producing products and performing services that they formed Guilds of their own and began exchanging products or services for those produced by others besides the Repairmans and Protectors.  At some point people started giving written promises of a future good or service instead, \"this file is redeemable for one kilogram of carbon from Phil\" and such.  And then people began to trade these promises around, unfortunately they were easy to copy and there were disputes arising from who had the valid file.  One group noticed this phenomenon and noticed that many other asteroids used qcoins that were nigh-impossible to counterfeit, they obtained a set of quantum servers and formed a Guild that began trading promise files for freshly mined qcoins.  The issue of starvation was largely solved, many people even started growing plants imported from earth or raised small animals for sale increasing the general food supply.  Though the algae vending machines remained open for those who could not afford other foodstuffs.  And despite all this theft remained a bit of a problem, the focus had just shifted from algae rations to other products that they couldn't afford but still desired.  Thus the Protector's Guild expanded until their organization became unwieldy and was divided into several smaller Guilds.\n\tStill, as great as the system that had emerged spontaneously from the chaos was, there were still some problems evidently.\n***\n\"What do you mean by 'we can't buy from you'?\"  Denal demanded from the representative of the Marquez habitat's industrial fabrication guild.  The red panda was practically in his face leaning across the desk that way.\n\t\"It's guild rules, we can only accept raw materials gathered by one of the miners or chemists guilds.\"  The mixed breed dog parahuman replied nonplussed by Denal's particular way of asking him questions.\n\tAfter deciding that Vesta was, in fact, safer than most of the other asteroids in the immediate area we bought a long-term coverage contract from the Marquez Guild and set out to find uncommon minerals in the surrounding rocks.  After a week out in the black we came back with a load of tungsten, a very dense and strong metal that was used in a lot of heavy duty construction work.  Normally we could get a decent price for it but now we were finding it a bit difficult to offload on the locals.\n\t\"And just why can't you accept ores from independent miners?\"  Denal propped his drooping upper body over the desk with his arms as he asked further questions that I was sure would not get us closer to making money from this particular venture.\n\tThe dog stuck behind the desk paused for a few seconds as if he was having difficulty thinking of a good reason for the rule.  \"Well.  For one thing we don't maintain the equipment needed to determine the purity or even identity of the product.  The miners guilds do.\"\n\tOkay, now I was feeling a little offended.  \"I analyzed that ore.\"  I threw out before the bureaucrat in front of us.  \"It is 90% pure tungsten I guarantee it.\"\n\tHe turned slightly to face me.  \"And what is your guarantee worth?  Madam, err, sir, err?\"\n\tI hate it when people don't recognize that I have no gender.  \"I'm pretty sure the pronoun is \"zir\", I'm neuter.  And the name is Argentum, like the metal.\"\n\t\"Yes, well, Argentum is it?  How do I know that your assessment is accurate without certification from a guild?  For all I know you're lying outright about the contents of those containers that you and your colleagues want to sell me.\"\n\tI grabbed a  hold of my head in my left hand in started rubbing my forehead in exasperation.  \"At least the Ceres Directorate had their own mineral composition team.\"  I mumbled to myself at what I was sure were barely audible levels in disbelief.\n\tDenal pushed himself up off the desk and started for the door.  \"So what, we should try selling to the miners guild instead?\"\n\t\"No, I think you misunderstood me.\"  The fabricator's rep told us as we went out.  \"The guild as a whole doesn't buy materials, they only license and certify.  You have to join the miners guild.\"\n***\nAs we left the office me and Denal noticed a large animated advertisement on the side of a building.  It showed a view of the city around us, but the buildings were decayed, it seemed like they hadn't been maintained for decades.  It seemed deserted.  A caption stated: VESTA, 2300 A.D.  Then a figure in a pressure suit was seen walking down an alleyway, his species was indeterminable but appeared primate in origin.  He walked into a house, the interior was covered with dust that he left a shuffling trail through.  Entering the bedroom one noticed a bluish metal parahuman skeleton, with the distinctive skull of a feline, lying on the bed.  The figure picked up a wristpad the skeleton was wearing, dislodging the remains of the owner's hand and sending the bones clattering to the floor.  Then the figure flipped his visor upwards to examine his prize, revealing the furless face of a human being.  Words appeared at the bottom of the display and began to move slowly upwards.  EVERY YEAR HUNDREDS OF PARAHUMANS DIE FROM VIOLENCE, EXPOSURE TO HARSH ENVIRONMENTS, AND DISEASE.  AND UNLIKE MOST SPECIES WE CANNOT REPLACE THOSE LOSSES WITHOUT TECHNOLOGICAL ASSISTANCE AND CONSCIOUS EFFORT.  OUR PEOPLE ARE HEADED FOR EXTINCTION.  Then the scene began to shift, subtly at first and then becoming more and more clear, dust vanished, broken shelving was restored, burnt out lights came back on.  BUT WE AT THE SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF PARAHUMAN SPECIES BELIEVE WE CAN REVERSE THAT TREND.  Finally the human picking over the bones of long-dead parahumans disappeared and the skeleton was replaced by a sickly looking, but alive, panther.  Then the door opened and another panther who could have been a copy of the one in the bed, just healthier, wait not healthier just much younger, came through carrying a tray of foodstuffs.  The old cat smiled as he saw his clone, for surely that was what the other feline was, placed the tray on a cabinet next to the bed and pulled up a chair.  Then the scene shifted to a factory setting, a row of cylindrical glass tanks with robotic arms within laying flesh and sinew over metallic bones inside the tanks.  It panned over to a tank with a nearly complete male red fox hanging suspended in the tank while a team of technicians and another male fox, this one with grey hairs spotting his fur, stood nearby.  OUR CLONES ARE NOT MERE LUXURIES, THEY ENSURE A FUTURE FOR ALL OF PARAHUMANITY.\n\t\"Tugs at the heartstrings doesn't it.\"  I commented on the scene starting to repeat before me.  Denal nodded his agreement.\n\t\"Hey, didn't that Olga Wolf babe say that she was a clone?\"  I thought back to our first day in Vesta, she had said she was a clone, of the guildmistress of Guild Wolf no less.  And there was something else she'd said.\n\t\"She claimed that something called the 'SPPS' gave discounts on clones to Guild leaders.\"  I recalled.  \"Think this is the SPPS?\"\n\tDenal shrugged, \"seems likely.\"  Then he paused, as if in contemplation of something.  \"Hey, maybe we should all get clones.  We can be like one of those human families, me and Cole can be the dads, Aniya can be the mom, but what would that make you?\"\n\tI snorted derisively.  \"Save it until we have enough money to actually buy clones, I doubt they would charge a bunch of prospectors fresh from Ceres anything less than full price.  And last I checked clones were expensive.\"\n\t\"Right, right, let's go find a miners guild then shall we?\"  Denal held up his wristpad to look up the local listings for the various guilds.  Instantly I was reminded of the video, and the titanium alloy bones falling away from the prying hands of a future human looter.\n***\nDenal pulled up a map to the dense metal miners guild main office and we walked down there in five minutes.  On the way we called up Aniya and Cole and told them to meet us there.  Cole was already perched on a street light outside the building by the time we arrived but Aniya took an extra three minutes to trot up.  Once everyone had shown up we explained to the others the guild rules that kept us from selling our ores and how it seemed that the only way around them was to join a guild, like the one we were standing outside.\n\t\"Sounds like a stupid rule.\"  Cole commented from atop his perch above the walkway.\n\t\"He said it was because they didn't have any analysis equipment.\"  I explained.  \"Which makes some sense as a cost cutting measure but he also said that he didn't trust my own assessment.  Why should being in a guild make me any better at telling the difference between tungsten and lead?\"\n\t\"I don't know, why don't we ask them?\"  Aniya motioned towards the door to suggest that we go in.  I figured we might as well see what they had to offer and pressed the intercom button by the door.\n\tThere was a buzz and the speaker clicked on.  \"Hello?\"\n\tI answered, \"is this the dense metals mining guild?\"\n\t\"Yes, do you have an appointment?\"\n\tI hadn't thought of that.  \"No, were we supposed to make one?\"\n\t\"It depends on what you are after.\"\n\t\"We would like to join.\"\n\tThere was a brief pause, then the speaker crackled again with a response.  \"Well then, I've got the application forms here.  I can show you through the process.\"  The doors opened and we entered  Inside was a small lobby area with some chairs by one wall, and a massive tank of water covering the opposite wall.  Inside the tank was a computer terminal of some sort, and a giant octopus.  The cephalopod splayed out several tentacles, changed color multiple times, and let loose a couple jets of water, a speaker on the side of the tank came to life.  \"So, why do you want to join the guild.\"\n\tI moved over to the side of the tank glass that was closest to the mollusk's large eye.  \"We're a group of prospectors who just moved here from Ceres.  We attempted to sell some tungsten but the buyer stated that he couldn't take it because we weren't certified by a guild.\"\n\t\"Naturally.  Freelancers are too untrustworthy, how can one be sure that their wares are truly saleable.\"  A tablet slid out of a slot on the wall opposite of him.  \"Each of you fill out your personal information, there's a separate file for everyone on that tablet.\"\n\tAniya picked up the tablet and filled in her information before handing it to me.  It was rather straightforward, Name: Argentum, Date of birth: 2069, Gender: neuter, e-mail address, voice comm code, Special Skills: I selected both chemical analysis and emergency medic.  For employment history I listed first my work for the corporation that had commissioned my creation, then the Ceres Directorate before the layoffs, and finally my current employment as a freelance prospector.  I chose not to fill in any of the optional references, given our status as fugitives from another asteroid.  I then passed the tablet to Cole who filled it out and then passed it to Denal who fitted the device back in its slot.\n\t\"All right then.  We will need to assess your abilities before accepting your application to join the guild.  Tomorrow a representative of the guild will join you on one of your expeditions to observe your techniques and verify your claims.\"  The octopus probably had a script written in his translator specifically for this situation.  \"Zir Argentum, I am scheduling an examination of your analysis skills in three days time.\"\n\tHold on a second there.  \"But it takes at least two days to reach any asteroids that haven't already been claimed.  I'd still be out in space at the time of the exam you have scheduled.\"\n\t\"Chemical analysts do not accompany miners to the dig sites.  Guild rules to keep them safe from unnecessary risks.  There aren't too many parahumans who know how to identify the minerals we extract properly.\"\n\tI did not understand.  \"So miners don't know if they have a load of lanthanides or a chunk of carbon until they get all the way back to port?  What if they go broke because they wasted time hauling worthless material when they could have been looking for something more valuable?\"\n\tThe guild clerk released a bit of ink into the waters of his tank at that statement, I suppose I must have surprised him a bit.  \"The guild will subsidize your losses, otherwise your dues will comprise 10% of your total profits.  The habitat needs carbon too you know.\"\n\t\"Come on,\" Aniya grabbed my shoulder in a gesture of reassurance.  \"We still have enough money left over from the last sale to keep us afloat a little bit longer.\"  She was right, the 500,000 qcoins we still retained would be enough to finance another expedition, store the tungsten from the last haul in one of the portside warehouses, and pay for our protection plan for another couple of weeks.\n\t\"All right then.\"  I said with a bit of reluctance.  And we left, headed for an increasingly uncertain future.\n \nChapter 7\nThe next morning a grey parrot came to our ship and introduced himself as the observer from the miners guild.  I locked up my lab and emptied my cabin, what I couldn't carry on me was stored in the cargo hold.  I would be spending the next four to five days in a moderately priced hotel I had found the night before while my friends were busy working under the scrutiny of some bureaucrat.  And I didn't even have my experiments to keep me from getting bored.\n\tI spent the rest of that day reading and looking for bootlegged games on the network.  The second day I found some locally produced video drama series about a young Protector's investigator who seemed to uncover a lot of corpses produced by a variety of psychopaths who killed in different distinctive and quite gruesome ways.  It managed to hold my interest for a couple hours, impressive for a 15-minute web show.\n\tEventually there came the big exam that I had been waiting for.  Which turned out to be determining the composition of a few vials of iron, platinum, and lead dust.  I probably could have told what they were just visually but I put on a show of using the scales and the spectrophotometer to conduct a detailed and highly specific analysis for the benefit of the bored-looking raccoon assessing me.  When it was all over he printed out a small plastic card declaring me to be a certified chemical analyst of the heavy metal miners guild and gave it to me for identification.  I was starting to think I would have been better off claiming to be a general miner and going with the others.\n\tFeeling like I should at least try to celebrate or something I went to a somewhat high-priced café for lunch, I'd mostly been eating the algae rations, and ordered a blob of vat-grown beef.  I rarely had the chance to eat meat, as even in-vitro animal flesh was expensive several million miles from the nearest pasture, but I felt justified in splurging a little to satisfy my carnivorous instincts this day.\n\tI'd been sawing at the chunk of artificial meat for nearly fifteen minutes when he showed up.  A muscular cross fox wearing synth-leather pants and an open-front shirt that showed off his pecs.  He spotted me and walked over to my table.  \"Looks like you're having some trouble there.\"  He stated without so much as a word of introduction.\n\t\"I'm used to algae products.\"  I replied as I tore off a chunk of meat and popped it in my mouth.  I chewed the tough material vigorously for several seconds before swallowing.  Who was this guy to suggest that a canine did not know how to eat meat?\n\t\"You should eat meat more often.  It's what our ancestors evolved for.\"  True, though he probably meant the foxes that contributed maybe two percent of our DNA rather than the humans who lost their leaf-processing intestines sucking the marrow from gazelle bones.  \"My name's Walker, what about you babe?\"\n\tBabe?  I choked down the last of my mouthful and glared at him.  \"Argen, and for your information I'm neither a girl nor an effeminate boy.\"  Most female parahumans have human-like mammary glands, probably added in there by a lonely genetic engineer, so I'm not often mistaken for female.  However there weren't very many neuters made, the earlier mentioned motivation issues making us not particularly popular among work crews, so I am frequently taken for a slim male or on occasion a female with smaller than average breasts.\n\t\"Oh really now, I like a challenge sometimes.\"  He reached his hand towards mine.  About that time I realized that he didn't really smell right, the genetic engineers deliberately chose not to introduce the genes for the distinctive musk my four-legged kin produced but my sense of smell was almost as good as theirs and even without specialized glands there was a subtle difference between each species' scents.  That said I'm not entirely sure whether I realized that Walker smelled more dog-like than foxy before or after I felt the band snap around my wrist.\n\tSurprised I yanked my arm back, I saw a smart handcuff apparently set to close around the first wrist it came across connected by a thin cable to, Walker's arm, there was no apparent matching cuff on his wrist it was like the cable came straight out of his fur.  He pulled my arm back down to the table and flipped his own arm to pin it down.  He gave me a wicked looking grin as he told me, \"Argentum, chemical analyst on Ceres deep space mining vessel ANQ18K458, you are under arrest for the murder of Kurt, clone of Vice President Cooper.\"\n\tI panicked then, with my left hand I drew my spring-knife and slammed it concealed in my fist on Walker's arm.  Unfortunately the trick I'd imagined where I would pop the blade into my attacker's flesh didn't work as well as I'd hoped, the blade hit something tough and seemingly impenetrable and the spring instead sent my arm flying back off his.  As I swung back for another hit he caught my blade arm and forced the knife out of my hand.  He flung me to the ground and attempted to wrestle me into submission.  As I struggled I heard a loud whirring sound and a quadrotor drone with a pair of automatic gauss rifles slung to its undercarriage descended upon the open café.  The few customers that had stayed behind to gawk hurriedly ran or bounded away.  A loud voice erupted from the drone's speakers.  \"Unidentified parahuman!  You will cease assaulting this paying customer of the Marquez Guild and explain yourself!\"\n\tWalker scowled at the drone, then hit a space on his right breast before returning his arm to pinning me down.  The image of the suggestively dressed cross fox disappeared revealing a bloodhound wearing an armored bodysuit, what looked like spider silk with plates of thick composite or metal spaced strategically all over the suit.  I spotted a nick over one of the plates on his cuffed arm where my knife had tried to penetrate.\n\t\"I'm Walker, a bounty hunter for the Ceres Directorate.  Ze has committed a crime against the executives of the Directorate and I am here to bring zir to justice.\"\n\t\"He was launching missiles at us!\"  I objected loudly.  But before I could say anything further Walker covered my mouth with my own arm.\n\tThe drone spoke again.  \"You will allow zir to stand up and this drone will accompany you two to the nearest Marquez guard station.\"  A pair of red lights on the barrels of each coilgun lit up, presumably the capacitors to the electromagnets.  \"You have five seconds to comply.\"\n\tGrudgingly Walker did comply, yanking me up as he stood so that I stumbled onto my feet.  He dragged me along as the drone led us, flying backwards to keep its guns on us, to the station.  There we were passed on to a group of mostly feline parahumans in riot gear with large gauss pistols slung on their hips next to a shock baton and a pair of smart cuffs similar to the ones binding me to the bounty hunter.\n\tWe were taken before a massive jaguar whose name tag read \"Marquez, Derrick\".  Was this one of the Guildmaster's clones that Olga Wolf had mentioned?  He glowered at us before demanding, \"now what is this all about?\"\n\tWalker was the first to speak.  \"Twenty-six days ago a freighter piloted by a parahuman known as Kurt went dark near Ceres.  Three days later his ship was found floating derelict, the cockpit was shattered and the body of the pilot was in several hundred frozen pieces.  There was just barely enough intact genetic material in a severed hand that was found still attached to the steering column to identify the remains as belonging to Kurt.\"  I could feel myself cringing a bit at the description of the carnage.  \"The Directorate decided to investigate all ships that had been in the area of the incident at roughly the same time.  The only ship that was unavailable for inspection was the one that zir Argentum here was serving aboard.  When the Directorate received a request for references from one of the mining organizations here concerning Argentum and zir companions Denal, Aniya, and Cole we surmised that they were somehow responsible and a bounty was posted.\"\n\tDerrick glanced first at myself, then at Walker, then back at me.  \"When the drone intervened you said something about him \"launching missiles at you.\"  Would you care to elaborate?\"\n\tI suppose I'd already blown my chance to insist that I knew nothing of Kurt's death.  I took a deep breath and started to explain.  \"Twenty-five days ago we were headed back for Ceres after discovering a significant quantity of gold in one of the lesser asteroids.  All of a sudden our aft sensor pod suffered damage inflicted by a military grade laser beam.  Our pilot, Cole, took us behind another asteroid and we attempted to hide there.  That was when the missiles came.  Our automated defense turrets detonated the missiles at a safe distance and a few minutes later a ship came around as well.  We played dead for a while until the other ship came closer and began to extend docking claws.\"  I began to dip my head in regret then.  \"I panicked and assumed manual control of one of our gauss turrets, I fired a stream of slugs across the ship and some of them penetrated the cockpit.  I did a spectroscopic analysis of the debris that indicated some of it was organic in nature.\"\n\t\"This is ridiculous!\"  Walker objected.  \"Is ze trying to claim that Kurt was a pirate of some kind after zir gold?  He was the clone of a high-ranking executive of the Directorate, why would he resort to stealing?  For all we know he mined those shiny yellow rocks and ze and zir friends killed him for them.\"\n\t\"These are both serious accusations the two of you are making.\"  Derrick stated flatly.  \"Do either of you have video recordings of the event in question?\"\n\t\"Yes!  I have a copy of the video and the sensor logs on my tablet.\"  Finally I had something I could use to defend myself with.  \"It's in my hotel room.  I can give you the address and keycard now.\"  \n\t\"Now wait a second!\"  Walker had yet another objection.  \"Those can be faked.\"\n\t\"My technical team has a lot of experience with falsified evidence, they'll be able to tell.\"  Derrick motioned for two of his subordinates to take the keycard I had drawn from my kilt pocket and go to the hotel room I mentioned.  Then he stared at me.  \"Tell me, piracy is a pretty serious offense pretty much everywhere in the belt last I recall.  Why didn't you think of reporting the incident to the authorities on Ceres?\"\n\t\"The Directorate does not recognize self defense as a valid excuse for violence.\"  I explained.  \"And in any case we found out later that he was the clone of a vice president, we figured we were better off taking our chances out here.\"\n\t\"Yes, I know how the progeny of the rich and powerful are prone to act.\"  Derrick shot me a grin that looked disturbingly wolfish for a big cat.  \"Always thinking that they can get away with anything just because they have an influential relative.\"\n\tTen minutes later my tablet was brought in and the video logs of the event were reviewed behind closed doors in a side room.  Fifteen minutes after that the door opened and an officer came back out, apparently they had found no evidence of editing, the footage was raw from the sensors as far as they could tell.\n\tDerrick called up a still image from the video on his desktop holopad, it displayed the ship that had attacked us.  \"Is this the victim's spacecraft?\"  He asked Walker.\n\t\"Yes, it is.\"  Walker replied.\n\tThe apparent leader of the local guild branch advanced the video several frames until the craft had rotated so that the underside, with the missile tubes, was facing the camera.  \"Looks a bit heavily armed for a freight craft, especially one that makes berth at a habitat that I just confirmed does not allow violence in self-defense.\"  The bounty hunter started to form a response but Derrick continued.  \"I mean, the lasers might be justified as anti-meteor point defense, but the missiles are a bit much don't you think?\"  Walker seemed to be gasping for words at this point, but none came.\n\tWalker slumped forward in defeat.  \"All right, all right, I'll leave Argentum and zir friends alone.\"\n\tDerrick dismissed the image and began entering something that we couldn't see.  \"Bounty hunter Walker, you are barred from entering the area of service covered by Guild Marquez.  We will also be posting to the board you retrieved our client's information from and stating that as long as ze is a paying customer of ours bounty hunters will not be allowed to pursue zir.  And the video will be mailed to every employee and executive of the Ceres Directorate with a publicly known address.\"  The cuff around my wrist was uncoupled and Walker was taken out of the room by a pair of officers.\n\t\"Thank you, I was a bit worried there.\"  But as I got up and turned to leave I felt a strong paw grab onto my tail and pull me back.  I looked back and saw Derrick Marquez reaching across his desk to grab me.\n\t\"Where do you think you're going?  We're not done here yet.\"  I pulled my tail back and sat down again.  \"You see, when you and your buddies signed on with us we figured that you were running from conviction for some petty theft or tax evasion or something like that and adjusted your rates accordingly.\"  He sat back down and leaned back with another wolfish grin on his face.  \"Killing an executive's relative is a much more serious offense you see.  And as such we incur many more expenses protecting you from bounty hunters and assassins.  I'd say that we'd be justified in doubling, or even tripling your premiums.\"\n\tThree thousand qcoins a day, combined with the miners guild dues and mortgage payments (I didn't want repo men coming after us too)?  Not every expedition was as fruitful as the last couple we'd embarked upon, we'd likely go bankrupt within a month or two.  \"But you're solving that problem for good aren't you?  With the posting and the videos?\"\n\tHe laughed disturbingly loudly at that statement.  \"I could count the number of refugees we cover for whom having evidence of their innocence posted by a bunch of anarchist barbarians removed their bounties on one hand.\"  He held up three fingers to show what he meant.  \"Now, V.P. Cooper might take some flack on the local Ceres blogs for making a pirate, maybe he'll even lose his job.  But in our experience that only means he'll resort to less than legal means of getting his revenge.  The next parahumans to come after you might not bother trying to take you alive.\"\n\tI shuddered, the thought of some camo-suited killer planting a blade in my heart or poisoning my nutrients was not a pleasant one.  I supposed I could see his reasoning but three times our current rate still seemed a bit excessive.  I told him that the most we could afford was double our current payments.\n\t\"Well then, maybe this will convince you to reconsider a bit.\"  He called up another video from the logs backed up on my tablet.  This one showed the incident as we were arriving on the bridge at the start of the battle, the one where Denal yanked me out of Aniya's slimed pouch, from an angle that quite clearly showed her more private parts.  \"I don't know about Ceres but here there's a significant group of you endophiles.  A lot of people think that their neurons are a bit cross-wired and have a tendency to avoid them like the plague, especially those parahumans with pouches, with the exception of a few who make a living prostituting themselves to those freaks, and they're ostracized just as badly by the rest of their kind.\"\n\tI gripped the arms of my chair like my hands were hydraulic vises.  I practically burst out at him, \"It's not sexual to us!\"  And then I amended a bit more calmly.  \"And I thought parahumans had no taboos.\"\n\t\"Yeah that would be all nice and utopian now wouldn't it?\"  He switched off the hologram and leaned in closer to me.  \"If everyone were to know what you two get up to in the bedroom, and apparently the bridge, you would be hard pressed to get a job scrubbing out sewage lines.  And your friend, Aniya is it?  Well she would probably end up having twenty of your filthy sewage scrubber colleagues inside her every night just to pay her protection money to the hookers guild.  She might even be picked up by some of the sex slavers that come through here every now and then.\"\n\tThat did it, I couldn't do mass sanitation work to save my life.  And poor Aniya shouldn't have to live that horrible way just because she helped me relax in such a way.  \"Okay, okay.  I'll scrape up three times the fee.  Just don't include anything in the video to suggest that I like to sleep in her pouch.\"\n\t\"Smart move foxy.\"  Derrick Marquez said as he slid over a tablet with a form for the new amount for me to sign.  \"And don't even think of telling anyone that I blackmailed you, I too know the advantages of having powerful relatives.\"  He waved to a printed out photo on the wall behind him, which showed nine nearly identical jaguars, with only their clothes to differentiate them.  In the center of the field of view sat a jaguar wearing a closely tailored suit, a scar running down his left cheek marring his features.\n\tNervously I quickly applied my thumbprint to the document and left.  When my crew mates arrived the next day I practically leaped into Aniya's arms.  I spent the entire night and half of the next day huddled up in her pouch, with all the security equipment within five meters of her room disabled.\n \nChapter 8\n\"A bounty hunter, seriously?\"  Denal sounded incredulous.  \"How did he even know we were here?\"\n\tIt was the day after my friends had come back from their assessment trip, they'd found a decent sized chunk of something dense and grey, they hadn't checked what it was officially but the readings I'd seen suggested something in the area of osmium.  And they had become certified members of the miners guild, like myself except that they would still be going on these expeditions.  Though now I wasn't too sure I wanted to leave the habitat.\n\t\"He said that he tracked us thanks to the miners guild sending messages asking for references to the Ceres Directorate.\"  I replied to Denal's question, he looked a bit guilty about something at my statement.  \"And anyways even if one of us wasn't stupid enough to list some references on their applications there are several financial records that would place us here.  The large-scale exchange of our Ceres qcoins for Vesta's, the mortgage payments we send their way to fend off repossession, et cetera.  Probably why he was in the region in the first place, no way he could have flown all the way here from Ceres in the three days since we applied to the guild.\"\n\t\"Not necessarily.\"  Cole threw in his opinion.  \"Vesta is passing fairly close to Ceres now.  And there are a lot of ships faster than ours.  I'd guess that a bounty hunter would use a fast courier class ship or maybe a military surplus interceptor if they're chasing people.  And maybe we should keep running too, make it harder to find us.\"\n\t\"Cole, with the communication relays connecting every station in the belt anywhere we tried to hide would be known everywhere within hours.\"  I found it a bit hard to believe that he was still determined to leave this place.  \"And most governments would have just let him take me, and you too once you'd come into port.  The Marquez Guild reviewed the evidence and sent him packing, even if they tripled our rates.\"\n\t\"Tripled?\"  Aniya exclaimed in disbelief.  \"Can we even afford that?\"\n\tI told her truthfully, \"I don't know.  Maybe, it depends on how much we can make  off these jobs.\"\n\t\"We should move to the Wolf Guild's territory.\"  Denal suggested, I suspected he was still a bit infatuated with that rules-bending investigator who had saved our lives on our first day in the asteroid.  \"I bet Olga would give us a better price than these guys are.\"\n\tYep, definitely infatuated, at least he was leaving me relatively alone now.  \"Odds are her progenitor would charge us just as much.  And that would make the commute to and from the spaceport a regular gauntlet where anyone who wanted to claim our bounty could go after us.  Marquez at least will be able to keep us safe from bounty hunters and hit men close by our livelihood.\"  I neglected to mention the real reason, that being the blackmail that Derrick Marquez had inflicted upon me when he threatened to include what many would take as evidence of perverted sexual practices in the video he sent out as evidence of our justification for killing an executive's clone.\n\t\"So, what are we going to do if we can't afford it?\"  Cole asked, probably with a bit of justification but I thought he still sounded overly critical of Vesta's society.\n\tI came up with an idea that I thought might work.  \"I'm not stuck on the ship for extended periods of time anymore.  Maybe I could do some more analysis work for the guild while you're out mining or something.\"  Surely the miners guild needed all the analysts they could get if we weren't even allowed in the field.\n***\nA week later I found myself in the minute apartment I'd rented looking over job listings.  It turned out that being the newest chemist in the miners guild, no matter that I had just as much experience as most of the \"senior\" members, meant that hardly any jobs were ever thrown your way.  I wasn't even allowed to perform the tests on the osmium sample that my friends had brought back.  That load combined with the tungsten we had brought in the previous run had barely netted enough to pay the Marquez clan for another couple weeks.  What with the guild's 10% and the storage fees for the tungsten and other assorted expenses.  So they were already out on another expedition to find more heavy metals for the guild to profit off of.\n\tWait, did I say \"clan\" when referring to the Marquez Protectors Guild?  Oh, right, well about then was when I guess I started to see the Protectors Guilds for what they truly were.  Though to be honest it was a web show that I started watching while waiting for the miners guild to send me some work, \"Crowns of Furtopia\" I think it was.  It was this fantasy series that took place on an alternate earth inhabited by parahumans instead of humans and technologically equivalent to 10th century Europe.  The main plotline seemed to involve these families, yes they could reproduce in the fictional world of Furtopia, known alternatively as \"clans\" or \"houses\" that governed various regions of the country on which the show was set.  Apparently the show had gained such a following on Vesta that some of the terminology had seeped out and it wasn't uncommon to refer to the Protectors Guilds as \"house Wolf\", or \"clan Marquez\" or any of a dozen different variations on those because the leaders of the Guilds had such large clone families.  Anyways it was an impressive piece of work, they filmed with live actors wearing replica middle ages clothing and on board one of the few Cole habitats ever constructed that was pretty heavily terraformed, and they edited out the sloped upwards ground and sky to make it look like it was actually on a planet.\n\tSpeaking of those clone families I had been scrolling through the list of jobs that were currently open on the asteroid when I came across a listing from the Society for the Preservation of Parahuman Species.  Curious I opened the entry and found that it was for a position as a biotechnician in their cloning facility.  The pay was substantial, with negotiable hours, but what really caught my attention was the line that stated \"all insurances, health, property, Protectors Guild, covered entirely.\"  If that meant what I thought it meant the job was as good as 99% pure platinum for someone like me, I might even make enough to pay for my friends' insurance.  I applied immediately.\n\tI was taken by surprise an hour later when I received a call from the SPPS on my tablet, they wanted an interview by video chat already.  I opened the chat app and was greeted by the image of a large brown creature that looked halfway between a badger and a bear, a wolverine I would later learn.  The interviewer directed his large brown eyes at mine and introduced himself.  \"Good morning Argentum, my name is Caleb Burns and I'm here to determine if you're the type of parahuman the Society for the Preservation of Parahuman Species needs in order to continue our most worthy goal of ensuring the survival of our culture.\"  I could barely see more than his head but he seemed to be wearing some sort of white lab coat or possibly a ceremonial robe of some kind with intricate designs of DNA helixes patterned up and down the lapels in gold.\n\tThat was an interesting question, \"the type of parahuman the SPPS needs\"?  What types of parahumans was he referring to?  Species of non-human genes?  Skill sets?  Body type?  I couldn't tell what he was referring to so I started to talk about my hobbies.  \"Well, I have been performing my own DNA tests using the genetic material of myself and my crewmates for about four years.  Attempting to find the genes that were modified to make me a neuter instead of male or female.\"\n\tThis Caleb being was obviously not too interested in my statement, probably because I had already listed my hobby of messing with the codes of life.  \"Yes, yes, what exactly was it that persuaded you to apply for this position?\"\n\tI thought that saying \"the insurance coverage\" wouldn't be particularly well received so I chose to share the other thing that had attracted me to the opening.  \"That advertisement, with the human picking over the remains of parahuman civilization after we've all died off.  I thought it was rather inspiring.\"\n\tHe stared at me with an expression of surprise on his face.  \"Really?  Those ads worked?  I thought they would never convince anyone.  You know, the idea of family being too foreign for most parahumans.\"\n\tFamily?  Oh, the last scene with the clone taking care of his ailing progenitor.  \"I suppose some things are just embedded in our genes.\"\n\t\"Yes, yes, I suppose they are.  The directive to propagate those genes being one of the strongest I suppose.  Would explain why the Guildmasters all rushed to support the old man when he offered them additional clones.\"  The wolverine suddenly seemed to realize that he'd said something he hadn't intended to let slip and covered his mouth with two pairs of hands.  Or rather one pair of hands and one pair of paws, it seems he was a taur.  Slowly, embarrassed, he moved his hands and paws away and continued speaking.  \"Anyways, speaking of clones what do you think of them?\"\n\tI thought back to the Vice President's clone who attempted to kill us, and the Marquez clone that threatened to expose certain details of my and Aniya's lives.  And how their progenitors had sought disproportionate retribution for one's death and the other had apparently enabled his clone to extort extra money from their customer base.  But I also recalled the message presented by that ad, and Denal's half-serious comment about our group getting a bunch of clones once we had enough to commission them all.  I thought of the possibility of those powerful people's clones becoming the entirety of parahumanity within the next century, they might even become the majority within my own lifespan and make my last few years a living hell before I broke down and ceased to be.  \"I believe that we need to think about our future.  And clones are the future for our kind.\"\n\t\"That's good to hear.\"  Caleb replied.  \"It says here that you came to Vesta recently aboard a mining ship originally from Ceres.  And that you're a registered member of the heavy metals miners guild here.  Why would you want to join the SPPS when you're already employed?\"\n\tNot good, I couldn't tell him why I needed more money, that would be the interview equivalent of suicide.  \"They don't give very many jobs to new chemical analysts, they didn't even allow me to do the purity control for my former crew's hauls.\"  I contemplated whether I should tell him a bit about the high insurance rates I'd been subjected to.\n\t\"And I'll bet that the Marquez Guild has been extorting a lot of qcoin from you since you just showed up on Vesta, haven't they?\"\n\tI was instantly horrified at that statement, how much did he know?  \"Maybe, a little.\"  I tried to sound calm but was finding it difficult.\n\t\"Well, don't worry about that.\"  Caleb Burns shot me a wink and smiled.   \"Jakob Griggs and Jerome Marquez are old buddies, I'm sure if you sign on he'll figure out a way to cut your rates down a bit.\"\n\tCut my rates?  How much influence did the SPPS have?  \"I was under the impression that all insurances would be covered.\"\n\t\"Well,\" Caleb shrugged and slicked the fur on his head back.  I could guess that I had caught him in something.  \"Technically it's deducted from your paycheck, but we can usually convince them to lower their rates significantly, and the pay we offer is considerable in and of itself.\"\n\t\"How much is 'considerable'?\"  I found myself asking.\n\tHe quoted me a rather respectable pay rate, not quite enough for me to live on with the increased Marquez fees.  But if he was telling the truth about the Society's leader having the ability to lower the insurance paid by his employees, I might even be able to help cover my crewmates as well.  I agreed to come over to their facilities and take a look around.\n***\nThe Society's headquarters was a five-story building built into the cave wall of the cavern covered by the Marquez Guild.  The front face of the structure was halfway covered with animated holograms similar to the one I had seen earlier, along with murals of DNA helixes and parahumans in biofabrication tanks and other stuff like that.  I walked up to the front doors made of stained glass showing a nude male savannah cat with his arms and legs spread out in a pattern that made it look like he had four arms and four legs.  Wonder what that was supposed to mean?\n\tCaleb Burns was standing by the front counter in the main lobby, my guess that he was a taur was correct, and he had somehow managed to tie his robe slash lab coat in such a way that it enclosed his hind legs without showing anything.  He saw me and gave a slight bow in my direction.  I returned the gesture.  \"Hello, Argentum, welcome to our humble cloning laboratory for the preservation of the parahuman clade.  Are you ready to begin the tour?\"\n\tI told him \"yes\" and the wolverine in a robe turned to a sealed hatch next to the counter, it was marked \"Decontamination chamber\".  He swung it open and gestured for me to follow.  We found ourselves in a room filled with light environment suits hung on racks in a variety of shapes and sizes.  Caleb removed his robe and wriggled into a large taur-shaped suit, I did the same with my kilt and vest and a medium bipedal suit with a large enough tail.\n\t\"Through this door is our main production floor.\"  He explained, speaking through an external speaker on the front of his suit.  \"We have a lot of delicate equipment and biological substances out there.  The last thing we need is contamination from loose fur or someone breathing too hard.\"\n\tI supposed I could understand that.  Though I had to wonder about the state of my own experiments seeing how I hadn't bothered with airtight seals on my safety equipment.  \"Will this be where I will be working?\"  I asked him.\n\t\"Part of the time, you'll probably be in quality control.  Making sure there's no unforeseen mutations in the cell cultures.\"  He rattled off fairly quickly.  \"Most of your work will be done in the side labs.\"\n\tHe opened the other door and we walked out into a massive room that probably qualified as a cavern in its own right.  There were at least three stories worth of machinery, all chugging along and mixing some vat of cells or pumping some fluid into a tank like the one the clone at the end of the ad emerged from.  One of the tanks had a bluish skeleton inside, which brought to mind the long-decayed corpse in the same ad, while another adjacent tank had a body that was almost complete, half covered in a layer of skin.\n\t\"You'll mostly be coming out here to take samples from the cell cultures.\"  He pointed at a set of small vats hanging suspended above one of the biofabrication tanks.  \"It's almost completely automated.  All we need to keep this running are a couple of technicians who perform maintenance and repairs every few weeks.\"\n\tWe came to a stairway leading upwards to a large room with a glass wall facing the production floor.  Through it I could see a half-dozen parahumans of various species in hazmat suits fussing over a variety of beakers, test tubes, petri dishes, and gene sequencers similar to the ones I had on our ship but obviously much more expensive.  As we entered, a tall male who appeared to be a spotted cat of some sort, possibly a savannah cat like the one on the front door, approached us.\n\t\"This is Maximus Griggs, he is the supervisor of this team.\"  Caleb introduced the tall feline as.  \"Maximus, this is Argentum, ze is interested in the open position here.\"\n\t\"Good to see you Silver.\"  He gave me a rather cat-like smile as he said this.  I guessed that he knew enough ancient Greek to know what my name meant.  \"You have any prior experience with genetic testing and mutation screening?\"\n\t\"I've performed some experiments on my own.\"  I began to tell him.  \"Trying to engineer nutrient algae that tasted like bacon.  And performing DNA tests on myself to figure out why the parts shops can't make me a set of sexual organs.\"\n\t\"You're neuter then?\"  Max inquired quizzically.  Not that I didn't blame him, even without this baggy suit it was hard to tell my actual gender, or lack thereof.  I nodded.  \"Well, we do some organ replacement and augmentation on the side.\"  My ears perked up, which I'm sure was noticeable even under that suit of mine.  \"We found that we can give neuters a cock or a vag, or even both, but unfortunately the gonads require genetic alterations that cause the immune system to reject them without a lot of drugs.\"\n\tMy ears flicked downwards in disappointment.  What good would a pole or a hole be without the sex drive to use them?  And I was still a bit in denial of the drive I had at that point.  \"Well, I hope I have the chance to contribute to something a bit more important here.\"\n\t\"You will.\"  The savannah cat told me.  \"We're building the future for all of the diverse parahuman species here.\"  He waved back at the production floor we'd just left.\n\tAt that moment something about his name clicked in my head and I realized that it sounded a bit familiar.  \"Are you by any chance related to Jakob Griggs, the founder of the SPPS?\"\n\tMaximus snorted loudly at my inquiry.  \"Oh, I'm related all right.  I'm one of his clones.\"  I was afraid of that, would he act like two-thirds of the other clones I'd met?  \"But dad wasn't the founder, that was his progenitor, who was simply named Griggs.  He died in an accident a year before me and my brothers were decanted.\"\n\tHe was a clone of a clone?  \"Sounds like he's a bit young to be running something this important.\"\n\tThe second-generation clone smiled at me before speaking further.  \"Maybe but we learn fast you know.  Look at me, I'm barely two years old and already I'm supervising an entire lab.\"\n\tSo the same nepotism I'd seen on Ceres and in the Marquez Guild existed here too.  At least the one who would be my boss seemed agreeable enough.  And the pay and benefits package were pretty good.  \"So, where do I sign?\"\n \nChapter 9\nI started work the next day.  It wasn't particularly difficult work mind you but I was being entrusted with the wellbeing of the future people of Vesta.  So I was started off with detecting mutations in previously tested samples.  On one occasion I found one deletion in the 13th chromosome that my instructor hadn't found, he claimed that I had made a mistake and started to go over the sequence again, only to notice one of the codons was missing an adenosine.  He changed my assessment and mumbled something about how it must have happened after his own analysis.  Regardless I found myself making almost as much as my share of a decent haul of ore back before we moved to Vesta and I was forced to leave the ship.  And they made good on their promise to arrange for my Protection rates to be lowered, I still paid more than I had my first couple weeks in the asteroid but it was now affordable.  Unfortunately there was only a couple hundred qcoins left after expenses to help my friends pay their fees, I sincerely hoped that they found some more valuable minerals like the mascon we had found just before the incident.\n\tMy job wasn't simply to detect mutations, it was also to determine whether a mutation was worth fixing.  Many mutations, a few extra letters in an intron here, an alu element deleted there, were harmless and would have no effect on the parahuman being printed out.  If there was something that actually changed the phenotype though, such as hemophilia, we then had to decide whether it would be more cost-effective to try and correct the defect with gene therapy, or throw out that batch and grow another one.  Both would add significantly to the customer's final bill for the clone, the relative expense of either option depending largely on what stage the mutation was caught at.  Preferably the mutations were to be caught early on, before too many nutrients had been expended growing defective cells.  We had a database of several common genetic diseases, but sometimes we came across a deviation that we lacked a prior record for, in those cases we had a simulator.\n\tThe simulator had access to several times the total combined processing power of every computer that existed on the planet earth during the first couple decades of the 21st century.  Now of course every major university on earth had a far more powerful machine than ours but it was still greater than most parahumans' entire guild or corporation's combined computing strength.  And our simulator used every microsecond of its immense CPU cycles predicting the results of the completely unheard of mutations we fed into it.  The results we got out of it were often astonishingly bizarre, one time it predicted that the fur of any parahuman fabricated with the mutation in question would grow in fluorescent green, another time it predicted that the cells would undergo apoptosis in 300-600 generations, we kept a sample from that one to confirm and indeed the cells did liquefy after 413 divisions.  Then one day, about two months after I had started working full time in the lab and discarded my miners guild membership entirely, I came across a deletion in the promoter region of a certain gene that changed everything.\n\tPROMOTER TO MOR10X-6 ENCODING GENE DISABLED, the readout from the simulator declared.  PROTEIN MOR10X-6 EXPRESSION MINIMAL TO NON-EXISTANT, POSSIBLE RESUMPTION OF MEIOTIC DIVISION.\n\tMeiosis?  As in the form of cellular division whereby cells divide into cells with half the minimum number of chromosomes in preparation for fusion with another cell that lacks a full complement of chromosomes.  I opened the genetic database and attempted to look up MOR10X-6.  What I got was a message stating CLEARANCE REQUIRED, PLEASE INPUT REGISTRATION NUMBER AND PASSWORD.\n\tConfused I showed it to Maximus.  He took one look at it and shrugged.  \"A lot of our equipment and data comes from loot seized from the biogenesis corporations in the revolution.  Occasionally you come across something that they tried to lock up, keep hidden from us peons and slaves.\"  He then did something completely in violation of safety regulations, he opened his containment suit and started fishing around for something.  \"Some hackers cracked the codes a while ago and sold them to the SPPS, I've got them written down here somewhere.\"  He explained, pulling out a folded square of flexible plastic.  There were apparently a set of numbers and passwords printed on the inside fold of the plastic, as he entered three different sets of codes into the tablet before access was granted to the restricted files.  When it opened he held the tablet up to his face, obscuring it from my view.  As he read his expression changed from confusion, to surprise, then something I couldn't quite identify.  He passed me the tablet.\n\tI read the proffered entry.  It was just as I suspected, MOR10X-6 was an artificial gene constructed by an agronomics corporation in the first quarter of the 21st century to protect genetic copyrights.  It produced a protein that interfered in the process of meiotic division, making it all but impossible to proceed but allowing the gonads to otherwise function normally, apparently creating a healthy but infertile genetically modified organism that would not go around pirating their intellectual property all willy-nilly.  In other words, it was the gene that made us reliant on cloning.\n\t\"This, is serious.\"  Was all I could think to say at that time.  It was certainly true, if a bit of an understatement, perhaps the biggest one of the century.\n\t\"I need to show this to my dad.\"  Max grabbed the tablet back from me and held it tightly to his chest as he ran off to alert his progenitor.  Expressing an exasperated sigh I picked out another tablet and returned to my work.\n***\nApproximately an hour and a half later I was called up to Jakob Griggs' office.  I handed my current project off to a co-worker and walked out towards the elevator.  The elevator car had seven buttons inside, one for each of the floors, one for a sublevel basement cut into the cavern floor, and another that was accessible only by biometric scan or remote operation.  Before I could look up which floor the head of the Society's office was on the elevator started moving upwards.  It went up, past the fifth floor to something marked with a \"J\" on the electronic readout.  As I stood dumbfounded the door opened onto a wide open space overlooking the city below.  It appeared that Jakob Griggs worked on the roof of the building.\n\tIn the middle of the expanse there stood a large table covered with food items that I had only seen in images and video before.  Stuffed turkeys, carved t-bone steaks, lobster, ham with the bone still inside.  How much had that whole thing cost?  On a chair at the far side of the table sat a savannah cat, like Maximus, wearing a black robe embroidered with crystals forming the shapes of DNA helixes.  He raised his head to glance at me as I slowly, nervously came forward.\n\t\"Ahh, Argentum.  Good to finally meet you.\"  He spoke to me in the same voice as my supervisor.  \"Please, get yourself into something more comfortable and join me for lunch.\"  He gestured to my right and I followed his hand with my eyes.\n\tI saw a coat rack with a white robe in the same patterns as the one Caleb Burns had been wearing when we first met, though fitted and sized more for a biped of my height and weight.  I looked down at my own bulky and uncomfortable containment suit.  \"Oh, I guess this would be a bit awkward to eat in.\"  But then I noticed a lack of enclosed spaces to change in.\n\tJakob saw me looking around puzzled and chortled loudly.  \"Don't worry.\"  He made a show of covering his eyes with the sleeve of his own robe.  \"I won't look.\"\n\tI supposed I could see where Maximus got his humor from.  I unzipped myself from my hazmat suit as quickly as possible and threw the robe on, hopefully he wouldn't mind my getting sweat all over it.  It was surprisingly comfortable, like it was made from soft plant fibers instead of the bacterial plastics we made most of our clothes from in the belt.  It must have been made from materials imported from earth, like the feast before me.\n\tI stepped awkwardly towards the chair on the opposite end of the table, presumably where I was meant to sit.  At the sound of the chair legs scraping along the floor Mr. Griggs put his arm back down and saw me cautiously sitting down.  \"I take it you've never had real meat before Mx. Argentum?\"  He inquired, to which my only answer was a short nod.  \"Not surprising, it is quite expensive to import anything from earth or Mars to begin with.  Perishable items such as animal flesh even more so.\"  He speared another piece of steak on his fork and raised it to his mouth before speaking again.  \"Please, try the chicken, it's unlikely you'll get another chance to try it soon.\"\n\tKnowing he was right, and finding the fragrance too hard to resist I tore off a leg from the roasted bird in the center of the table.  Discovering it difficult to keep my manners I tore into it with a ferocity I found hidden deep within the few genes I had not inherited from any human.  I had eaten vat-grown poultry before, partially to see Cole's reaction to my consuming tissue from his own taxonomic class (not much it turns out, apparently corvids are as close to fowl as foxes are to cows or something along those lines), but this bore little resemblance.  This was juicy, tender, with a crisp skin that the tissue vats seemed to leave out.  Within a matter of minutes I had stripped the leg to the bone.\n\tAs I tossed the oddly white and flexible bone aside Jakob Griggs spoke up again.  \"That was actually the turkey but whatever you prefer.”  I made a vain effort to keep my embarrassment from showing but apparently he could see it anyways.  \"Don't worry about it.\"  He told me with a dismissive wave of his hand.  \"I'm sure this is the first time you've been able to tell the difference between one meat or the other.\"  But then his expression changed all of a sudden, becoming ice cold as he stared at me from across the table.  \"So, I hear you found out about one of the corps biggest secrets.\"\n\tI think I felt my fur stand up at that simple statement, something about the tone those ordinary words were issued in made me feel a chill.  \"Well.\"  I started to say, a bit nervous and taken off guard by the sudden shift in his demeanor.  \"It was completely by accident, but I believe I discovered a mutation that deactivates the gene that renders us, I mean you and other parahumans with sex organs, infertile.\"  I had to correct myself, there was definitely more than just one simple gene that prevented neuters like myself from making babies.\n\t\"I see.\"  Jakob told me as he reached for a small box on the table with a set of holes in the lid.  \"And just what do you intend to do with that mutation?\"\n\t\"Me?\"  I asked incredulously.  \"Well, I doubt I would do much with it, but I suppose one could use a targeted mutagen to damage the gene and enable their testes or ovaries to undergo spermatogenesis or oogenesis respectively.  Possibly even use a CRISPr technique to knock out the entire gene.\"  The equipment to do either was fairly plentiful, it was far safer than gene therapy to simply create a compound that would bond to a specific gene sequence and destroy it in the rare instance of a harmful mutation that involved an addition rather than a deletion or transposition.\n\t\"Yes,\"  He then shot me a look that made me shrink back into my seat in primal fear.  \"And what do you think would happen to the Society for the Preservation of Parahuman Species if parahumans began to use that mutagen you're suggesting and started replicating themselves on their own?\"\n\tI paused as I thought about it for a minute.  \"Most people wouldn't need clones, they'd just find a friend of the opposite gender and produce new parahumans like most natural animals and humans do.\"  I realized at that moment that my job could be at stake.  \"But there would still be neuters like myself who would still need clones to continue their genelines.  And some people who simply prefer clones for some reason.\"  I thought of one more thing.  \"And besides, wouldn't your goal of preserving parahumanity be accomplished?\"\n\tJakob let out a low growl, my ears flattened and I felt my head slipping down beneath my robe, attempting to hide from the large and angry predator before me.  He addressed me once more.  \"Our goal doesn't just encompass creating the next generation so that our species outlive our individual selves.  There are other factors that we don't generally discuss with the public.\"  He shook the box he had picked up a minute earlier and I could hear a faint squeaking sound from within.  \"Are you familiar at all with the net series 'Crowns of Furtopia'?\"  He asked me, I nodded faintly yes and he continued.  \"Feudalism is the default state of any large group of animals, individuals work to preserve their own genelines and band together with their kin to compete with other kin groups.  The smart ones get the weaker groups to produce resources for them in exchange for protection from more short-sighted opportunists.  Human history has proven time and time again that in the absence of any other form of government feudalism re-emerges.  And I am sure that you are starting to see that to be true here on Vesta as well.\"\n\tI thought back to the pop culture references to the Protectors Guilds as clans and houses, and how every high-ranking official in the Guilds that I'd met had been clones of the Guild leaders, and what they were getting away with because of their relationship.  \"But, your progenitor was the one who enabled them to form kinship groups in the first place?\"  I asked him nervously.\n\t\"Yes, and that is how I continue to keep them in line.\"  Jakob Griggs let out another toothy grin that somehow intimidated me more than his growl had.  \"If I weren't able to threaten them with the revocation of their access to my cloning tanks they would be constantly fighting one another over territory like the animals they are.  As is the balance of power between the Protection Guilds is as unstable as a barrel of nitroglycerin.\"\n\tI believed that I understood now.  \"And you think if they were able to perpetuate their genelines on their own they would turn Vesta into a 22nd century version of Furtopia?\"\n\t\"I know they will.\"  Jakob informed me as he opened the box he was holding.  He reached inside and withdrew a live mouse.  I was amazed, that was the first time I had ever seen a non-sentient animal.  My unspoken question of what he intended to do with the mouse was answered when he sung his head back, opened his mouth, and dropped the mouse in.  There was a sickening snap and crunch of bones breaking and he swallowed loudly.  Licking the remaining blood from his lips he started to explain.  \"Live mice, expensive even by my standards.  Do you want to know why they're so expensive?\"\n\t\"Because the freighters need extra life support to keep them alive all the way out to the belt?\"  I feebly suggested.\n\t\"That is the bulk of it, yes.\"  Jakob nodded in response.  \"But another expense is the sterilization procedures they have to perform on every one of the mice before they leave earth orbit.\"  Puzzled I gave him a confused expression prompting him to continue.  \"If so many as one male and one female mouse are fertile in the same cargo module, they will inevitably find a way to mate and produce dozens of baby mice every few weeks.  And each of those babies will be able to make more babies within a month of birth.  By the time they get all the way out here the life support system of their module is overtaxed and you get a load of decaying mouse carcasses.  Do you see my point?\"\n\tI was afraid I didn't, but I wasn't sure I wanted to tell the very sure of himself cat that essentially owned all the law enforcement organizations on the asteroid that so I just stayed silent.\n\tApparently my silence was answer enough as he spoke again.  \"Sapient beings are no different.  Humans almost depleted their own ecosystem on earth, it's the whole reason they sent us out into space to obtain more resources for them to consume.  By controlling the price of cloning we prevent Vesta from becoming overpopulated and overstraining the flimsy life support systems we have in place.\"\n\t\"Surely, people are smart enough to stop reproducing before they reach the carrying capacity of their environment?\"  I objected, I could not imagine anyone being so stupid.\n\t\"And are you willing to bet the lives of everyone on this asteroid, possibly the entire belt, on that statement?\"  I could not, that was too big a decision for me to make, I slumped my head forward and shook it lightly.  \"So, you will not tell anyone else about your discovery?\"\n\t\"Yes,\" I told him with an expression of defeat plain on my face.\n\t\"Excellent.\"  Jakob Griggs said before popping another mouse into his mouth.  After swallowing he asked me another question.  \"Did you tell anyone else before coming here?\"\n\t\"Just your clone, Maximus.\"\n\t\"Good, I've already told him why he should keep his mouth shut.\"  Jakob looked back into the box of mice one last time and turned back to me.  \"It appears that I have no more appetite for mice today, but there is still one left here.  Would you care to try it?\"\n\tAt that point, I was afraid to refuse anything he asked of me.  I walked up to his side of the table and glanced down at the box.  There was one white mouse remaining, among the stains left by its siblings in the container, still trying in vain to scurry up the slick walls of the box.  I reached in and tried to grab it but it ran away to try and vault the opposite wall, I reached in with my other hand and managed to herd it between the two.  At that point I managed to take hold of its tail and pulled it out by the thin appendage.  Screeching in terror it tried to wriggle out of my hand, attempting to curl back on my fingers and claw at them, but to no avail.  Looking into its beady black eyes I steeled myself for what would come next, I opened my mouth and tried to lead the rodent inside.  Still clinging to a faint hope of survival it gripped onto my tongue with its sharp toes, the pain instead prompted me to bite down hard.  I heard the ribs crack, felt the squishy organs spill out of the holes in its torso, the hot blood streaming down my chin.  Not knowing exactly what to do next I flicked the corpse to the back of my mouth with my tongue, and with a great deal of effort swallowed.\n\t\"You have a bit of something there.\"  Jakob Griggs, the shadowy director of the anarchy of Vesta, gestured to his left cheek.  I picked up a napkin and dabbed it at the approximate area he had indicated, it came back stained dark red.  If I had been superstitious I might have taken it as an omen of things to come.\n \nChapter 10\nA few days after my encounter with my all-powerful employer I was eating dinner with my former crewmates.  Nothing anywhere near the quality of that veritable feast Jakob Griggs had, just some flavored lichen-based foodstuffs that grew in some of the smaller caves set aside for food production.  To be honest, I hadn't had much of an appetite after that eventful luncheon.  I was cutting up a greenish loaf when Cole spoke.\n\t\"It's funny,\" he said to no one in particular.  \"Just a couple days ago all our rates went up 10%.  Wonder what changed this time?\"\n\t\"No idea.\"  I suggested.  To be honest I had no idea what he was talking about, my own rates hadn't changed since I started working for the SPPS.  Why would everyone else's rise?\n\t\"Well, I asked some of the boys and girls I know by the docks.\"  Denal offered his own thoughts.  \"They said that Marquez hadn't upped their own bills by any significant amount.\"\n\t\"So, it's just us?\"  Said Aniya, who was tearing off chunks of two whole loaves of lichen bread as we were talking.  \"You think it's because of the whole bounty hunter thing?\"\n\t\"Doubt it, it's been weeks.\"  Cole said.  \"Unless something else happened with Argen over in the genetics labs.\"\n\tI paused for a second, I couldn't tell them anything about MOR10X-6, I had promised Jakob I wouldn't tell anyone.  \"No, nothing like that.\"  Which was true, in the vaguest of sense.  I had not encountered any bounty hunters or anything like that.  \n\t\"Here's an idea,\" Denal suggested, which probably meant it was doomed to fail.  \"That Derrick Marquez guy is just a big bully, like that V.P.'s kid we splattered out by Ceres.  He's not used to people standing up to him, so how about we miss a payment or two, and when he comes over looking for money we firmly, and with our weapons well at hand, tell him we're not paying the increased rate.\"\n\tIt was a bad idea, I could tell from the start that it was a bad idea.  \"Look,\" I told him.  \"I still have some money left over after the insurance deductions.  I could give it all to you guys and just live off the algal dole.\"\n\t\"And what about when the premiums get too high for even that to help?\"  Aniya threw in her own opinion.\n\tI honestly hadn't thought of that possibility, though to be honest I doubted my income could make much of a difference as is.  \"Look,\" I started to say instead.  \"You do not want to fight this guy.  You just don't.\"\n\t\"Maybe you don't, Argen, but the rest of us do.\"  Even Cole was in on this idiotic plan.  What was going on here?  \"You don't have to participate but we are going to convince him to stop charging us such exorbitant prices one way or another.\"\n\t\"Fine then!\"  I informed them with maybe a bit of anger evident in my voice.  I threw down my utensils and got up to storm out.  \"Just don't come running to me when you need to pay your medical bills after this fiasco goes down.\"\n***\nThe next day I headed down to the ship after work thinking that maybe I'd reacted a bit harshly to their plan, and that maybe I should have offered some more coherent arguments as to why it would be a bad idea to try to intimidate Derrick Marquez into lowering our payments.  All day I had been thinking of new arguments that I hoped would persuade them more effectively.  But all those ideas were dashed from my mind as I came around the bend and saw Marquez enforcers setting up a perimeter of yellow tape around the docking tunnel to our vessel.\n\t\"What's going on here?\"  I asked the nearest officer, an almost two meter tall tiger.\n\tHis response was to hold a camera up to my face and run my image through a tablet app.  When he read the results he glared down at me, and instead of answering my question he issued a question, or rather a demand, of his own.  \"Where is the red panda known by 'Denal'!\"\n\tWhat?  They wanted Denal?  Had he tried something stupid already?  The only response I could think to give was a short \"I… don't know.\"\n\tThe tiger did not seem pleased by this answer.  \"You liar.\"  He grabbed the front of my shirt and drew me close.  \"You two were on the same policy as the victims, you must have some idea of where he ran off to.\"\n\t\"Leave zim.\"  A disturbingly familiar voice came from a gurney set up by the Guild vehicle parked next to the tunnel entrance.  On the propped up stretcher was the one cat I least wanted to see at that time.  \"Ze's with Griggs.\"  Said Derrick Marquez, the corrupt clone of the Marquez clan's leader.\n\tThe enforcer dropped me and stalked off, back to whatever it was he had been assigned to do.  Cautiously I approached the commander, I saw that his stomach was bandaged, and that he was essentially confined to his impromptu bed by a set of intravenous tubes and straps to his legs.\n\t\"What…\"  I asked, afraid of what the answer might be.  \"What was he talking about?\"\n\tDerrick snorted, even such as simple gesture appeared to take a great deal of effort in his condition.  \"What do you think happened?\"  He lifted a hand to point towards the interior of the ground car next to him.  \"Your raccoon buddy went nuts and shot your other two friends.  Then when I tried to stop him he attempted to run me through with a sword.\"\n\tI looked in the direction he was pointing.  There sitting on the bed of the transport lay several items in plastic bags tagged with numbers for reference.  One bag had Denal's longsword, the thin blade snapped in half.  Aniya and Cole's dart guns were in another pair of bags, next to them a couple of darts that had apparently been fired.  But the interior of the vehicle was dominated by a pair of very large opaque bags that were zipped shut, one was just a little over one meter long, the other well over three.\n\t\"Are they…\"  I started to ask, but couldn't bring myself to complete the sentence.  \"They can't be, I was just having dinner with them last night.  It's not possible.\"\n\t\"Afraid so, silver.\"  The Marquez scion's voice was calm and controlled, as if this kind of thing were routine.  \"The darts Denal shot them with where loaded with massive doses of hydrogen cyanide, they were dead within minutes.\"\n\t\"But those are Aniya and Cole's guns.\"  I objected, still unable to grasp the reality laid out before me.  \"They would never put something so lethal in their darts, they hated killing.\"\n\t\"Then I guess you didn't know your crewmates as well as you thought you did.\"  Derrick Marquez started to lift himself up off his stretcher to turn towards me.  \"I suggest you go home and go to bed early, this is a lot to deal with.\"  Then his eyes lit up in a moment of sadistic glee.  \"Unless, this was your home, wasn't it?  Well too bad because we're seizing it as evidence.  You might be able to retrieve some of your things in two to six weeks depending on how long the paperwork takes to process.\"\n\t\"Hope you can handle the mortgage payments.\"  I said in a weak attempt at a witty comeback as I slowly walked away in the direction of the apartment I had called home for five nights out of each of the last five weeks.  Once I made it there I found myself taking Derrick Marquez's advice, I piled every blanket and pillow in the apartment on top of the bed and burrowed underneath them.  It was no substitute for Aniya's pouch, that would never again offer me the comfortable safety I had felt inside it.  By the time I crawled out to inform Maximus that I wouldn't be coming in to work the following morning the sheets were stained with sweat and tears.\n***\nI spent the day following the deaths of two of my closest and only friends and the disappearance of the third sitting in my bedroom wrapped in a blanket and watching video streams.  Having fully realized that I was living in a feudal nightmare I lost my taste for Crowns of Furtopia and began watching comedy shows.  There were hundreds of antique human comedies on the net, watching our great creators whacking each other on the heads with hammers never got old, as well as original parahuman works, often commenting on current events in one asteroid or another.  But then one of the not-so-serious news feeds I was watching led me to one that was serious, and a bit personal.\n\tThis was a video titled \"Newcomer to Vesta stabs Marquez clone, why?\"  And was uploaded by someone who went by the moniker of \"HoundOfGod\".  The last thing I needed was a reminder of what had just happened, but curiosity led me onwards.\n\tThe video started with a still image of Derrick Marquez staggering with a bloody broken blade sticking out of his kevlar body armor, the hilt of Denal's sword in his hand and an expression of pure fury on his face.  The voiceover began in digitally distorted harsh and gravelly tones, it sounded male but for all I knew the narrator was actually female and using software to hide her identity.  \"Yesterday, Derrick Marquez, a commander in the Marquez Protectors Guild, was stabbed by one known simply as 'Denal'.\"  The image changed to a street camera view of Denal, from one of our first days in Vesta.  \"Denal arrived on Vesta over a month ago with three companions, Aniya,\" a picture of Aniya in her spacesuit was shown, \"Cole,\" the raven's portrait, \"and Argentum.\"  Me, obviously.  \"The four of them had slain a pirate in self-defense near Ceres a couple weeks prior to their arrival at Vesta, who just happened to be a clone of a prominent V.P. in the Directorate hierarchy.  How ironic that they chose Vesta to escape reprisal for slaying a clone?\"  If only we'd known, Aniya and Cole might have been doing hard labor instead of lying in some morgue waiting to be recycled into raw nutrients.  \"The official report by house Marquez is that during negotiations with the commander over insurance premiums Denal suddenly slew Aniya and Cole with pressure darts loaded with cyanide, then charged Derrick with a Jiàn sword.  The blade then broke attempting to penetrate the commander's bodysuit and Denal fled.\"  I did not need to be reminded, as the video stated this I pulled the sheets closer together over my eyes.  \"However, there is one major problem with this account, after fleeing the scene Denal ran straight to territory covered by house Wolf and pled for asylum.  And what's more he had a video recording of the encounter taken via a mini-camera in one of his vest buttons.\"  So that answered where Denal was, hiding behind his lupine girlfriend's camouflage and gun.  \"The following video has been determined to be the original footage with no editing, for the simple reason that he had no time to edit while running for his life.\"\n\tThe video suddenly shifted to a scene of Derrick Marquez sitting at the far end of a table from the camera, to either side of the camera one could barely see some black feathered wings or furred paws resting on the table.  \"Now, I'm sure you can understand why we had to increase your rates so drastically, considering your present safety concerns.\"\n\t\"Yeah right,\" the person wearing the camera apparently spoke, given how the image jostled and I instantly recognized it as Denal.  \"You just want to suck every spare qcoin we own out of us.\"\n\t\"There are additional expenses racked up by fending off bounty hunters after your hide.\"  Derrick continued when Denal stopped speaking.  \"And your foxy friend is no longer paying zir share of the extra costs, so you three have to take up the slack.\"\n\t\"What?\"  The camera view shifted to the left, just barely showing Aniya expressing disbelief at this statement.  \"Argen's not paying?\"\n\t\"We have a bit of an agreement with zir employers.\"  The camera shifted back to Derrick for a few moments.\n\t\"That does not mean that we have to pay for zim.\"  It shifted to the right this time, showing Cole gripping the table tightly in all four sets of talons.\n\t\"I say it does.\"  Derrick stood up and popped the strap holding his sidearm in place.\n\t\"He's going to shoot, get him!\"  It was hard to tell but it looked like Denal was scrambling across the table sword drawn and pouncing on Derrick.  It was moving fast but I could just barely make out several sounds of darts flying before the jaguar was thrown down to the ground with the sword embedded in his bodysuit.\n\t\"Argh, you idiot.\"  Derrick shoved Denal loudly off of himself, there was a snap of metal breaking as he did so.  When Denal landed he saw Aniya and Cole lying prone on the floor, their bodies twitching and their mouths filling with foam.  There was a sharp intake of breath as Denal noted the darts in their necks, the glazed lifeless look on their faces.  Then he ran, deeper into the bowels of the ship, no doubt hoping that he could lose the no doubt relentless pursuer just standing up behind him.\n\tI stopped the video at that point.  First Denal was not only a lech but a murderer as well, then he was an innocent framed for the deaths of our closest friends by a corrupt Guildleader's progeny?  What was truth and what was lies?  How could I decide?\n","writing_bbcode_parsed":"<span style='word-wrap: break-word;'>Chapter 6<br />We spent the next three days touring the habitats in Vesta and asking people what they thought of the present situation on their asteroid.&nbsp;&nbsp;Many told us that the Protectors had drastically reduced the crime rate, and some other immigrants from different asteroids stated that dealing with them was preferable to most of the governments they had previously lived under.&nbsp;&nbsp;We weren&#039;t accosted by anyone else, though whether that was due to the Guilds keeping the criminal element under control or whether that was the weapons we were now openly carrying I do not know.&nbsp;&nbsp;Still, I got the impression that many of the people we asked weren&#039;t telling us everything.<br />\tEventually we pieced together the story of Vesta&#039;s controlled anarchy.&nbsp;&nbsp;After the revolution the inhabitants of Vesta, which had extensive mines and worker barracks but minimal supervision, decided to embrace the concept of anarchy, no rulers.&nbsp;&nbsp;The nutrient algae vending machines were hacked so that anyone could add their biometric data to the system and receive a daily allotment of calories from the machines, the fabricators were open to use by anyone who felt they needed something.&nbsp;&nbsp;If there was a shortage of fabricator materials or some of the life support systems began to malfunction or the algae went bad someone would fix the problem.&nbsp;&nbsp;If someone went crazy and started killing people they figured that an angry mob would drag him to the nearest airlock.&nbsp;&nbsp;Inevitably this turned out to not be the case.&nbsp;&nbsp;air scrubbers crapped out leaving entire sectors unlivable at a rate that overwhelmed the few people who had the initiative to fix them, infected algae was ignored until the food became toxic, and psychopaths found ways to murder people with no witnesses to form mobs.&nbsp;&nbsp;The tipping point came, ironically enough, when some people who were concerned about the degradation of the habitat organized and began working to fix the various problems full time.&nbsp;&nbsp;This group, known as the Repairman&#039;s Guild, initially suffered from a lack of manpower to resolve all the broken pieces of the habitat, until they came up with the idea of offering their members extra food rations.&nbsp;&nbsp;At first this extra food came from algae trays and hydroponics farms maintained by the Guild itself and voluntary donations from grateful civilians.&nbsp;&nbsp;But as time passed they needed more and more workers, and many Guilders assigned to collecting donations started to use physical force to intimidate people into giving up their food.&nbsp;&nbsp;This led to many people becoming malnourished, and some resorted to stealing food from others, during this time the Protector&#039;s Guild formed, and refused to aid anyone who didn&#039;t &quot;donate&quot; to them, and even more people starved as a result of their taking of yet more of the food.&nbsp;&nbsp;Some people tried to avoid giving away their rations by offering resources they had mined or items they had fabricated or services that they could provide, after some initial incidents the Guilds decided that they would accept payments other&nbsp;&nbsp;than food rations which convinced many people to find things that they could produce.&nbsp;&nbsp;Eventually so many people were producing products and performing services that they formed Guilds of their own and began exchanging products or services for those produced by others besides the Repairmans and Protectors.&nbsp;&nbsp;At some point people started giving written promises of a future good or service instead, &quot;this file is redeemable for one kilogram of carbon from Phil&quot; and such.&nbsp;&nbsp;And then people began to trade these promises around, unfortunately they were easy to copy and there were disputes arising from who had the valid file.&nbsp;&nbsp;One group noticed this phenomenon and noticed that many other asteroids used qcoins that were nigh-impossible to counterfeit, they obtained a set of quantum servers and formed a Guild that began trading promise files for freshly mined qcoins.&nbsp;&nbsp;The issue of starvation was largely solved, many people even started growing plants imported from earth or raised small animals for sale increasing the general food supply.&nbsp;&nbsp;Though the algae vending machines remained open for those who could not afford other foodstuffs.&nbsp;&nbsp;And despite all this theft remained a bit of a problem, the focus had just shifted from algae rations to other products that they couldn&#039;t afford but still desired.&nbsp;&nbsp;Thus the Protector&#039;s Guild expanded until their organization became unwieldy and was divided into several smaller Guilds.<br />\tStill, as great as the system that had emerged spontaneously from the chaos was, there were still some problems evidently.<br />***<br />&quot;What do you mean by &#039;we can&#039;t buy from you&#039;?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Denal demanded from the representative of the Marquez habitat&#039;s industrial fabrication guild.&nbsp;&nbsp;The red panda was practically in his face leaning across the desk that way.<br />\t&quot;It&#039;s guild rules, we can only accept raw materials gathered by one of the miners or chemists guilds.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;The mixed breed dog parahuman replied nonplussed by Denal&#039;s particular way of asking him questions.<br />\tAfter deciding that Vesta was, in fact, safer than most of the other asteroids in the immediate area we bought a long-term coverage contract from the Marquez Guild and set out to find uncommon minerals in the surrounding rocks.&nbsp;&nbsp;After a week out in the black we came back with a load of tungsten, a very dense and strong metal that was used in a lot of heavy duty construction work.&nbsp;&nbsp;Normally we could get a decent price for it but now we were finding it a bit difficult to offload on the locals.<br />\t&quot;And just why can&#039;t you accept ores from independent miners?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Denal propped his drooping upper body over the desk with his arms as he asked further questions that I was sure would not get us closer to making money from this particular venture.<br />\tThe dog stuck behind the desk paused for a few seconds as if he was having difficulty thinking of a good reason for the rule.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Well.&nbsp;&nbsp;For one thing we don&#039;t maintain the equipment needed to determine the purity or even identity of the product.&nbsp;&nbsp;The miners guilds do.&quot;<br />\tOkay, now I was feeling a little offended.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I analyzed that ore.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I threw out before the bureaucrat in front of us.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;It is 90% pure tungsten I guarantee it.&quot;<br />\tHe turned slightly to face me.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;And what is your guarantee worth?&nbsp;&nbsp;Madam, err, sir, err?&quot;<br />\tI hate it when people don&#039;t recognize that I have no gender.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I&#039;m pretty sure the pronoun is &quot;zir&quot;, I&#039;m neuter.&nbsp;&nbsp;And the name is Argentum, like the metal.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Yes, well, Argentum is it?&nbsp;&nbsp;How do I know that your assessment is accurate without certification from a guild?&nbsp;&nbsp;For all I know you&#039;re lying outright about the contents of those containers that you and your colleagues want to sell me.&quot;<br />\tI grabbed a&nbsp;&nbsp;hold of my head in my left hand in started rubbing my forehead in exasperation.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;At least the Ceres Directorate had their own mineral composition team.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I mumbled to myself at what I was sure were barely audible levels in disbelief.<br />\tDenal pushed himself up off the desk and started for the door.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;So what, we should try selling to the miners guild instead?&quot;<br />\t&quot;No, I think you misunderstood me.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;The fabricator&#039;s rep told us as we went out.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;The guild as a whole doesn&#039;t buy materials, they only license and certify.&nbsp;&nbsp;You have to join the miners guild.&quot;<br />***<br />As we left the office me and Denal noticed a large animated advertisement on the side of a building.&nbsp;&nbsp;It showed a view of the city around us, but the buildings were decayed, it seemed like they hadn&#039;t been maintained for decades.&nbsp;&nbsp;It seemed deserted.&nbsp;&nbsp;A caption stated: VESTA, 2300 A.D.&nbsp;&nbsp;Then a figure in a pressure suit was seen walking down an alleyway, his species was indeterminable but appeared primate in origin.&nbsp;&nbsp;He walked into a house, the interior was covered with dust that he left a shuffling trail through.&nbsp;&nbsp;Entering the bedroom one noticed a bluish metal parahuman skeleton, with the distinctive skull of a feline, lying on the bed.&nbsp;&nbsp;The figure picked up a wristpad the skeleton was wearing, dislodging the remains of the owner&#039;s hand and sending the bones clattering to the floor.&nbsp;&nbsp;Then the figure flipped his visor upwards to examine his prize, revealing the furless face of a human being.&nbsp;&nbsp;Words appeared at the bottom of the display and began to move slowly upwards.&nbsp;&nbsp;EVERY YEAR HUNDREDS OF PARAHUMANS DIE FROM VIOLENCE, EXPOSURE TO HARSH ENVIRONMENTS, AND DISEASE.&nbsp;&nbsp;AND UNLIKE MOST SPECIES WE CANNOT REPLACE THOSE LOSSES WITHOUT TECHNOLOGICAL ASSISTANCE AND CONSCIOUS EFFORT.&nbsp;&nbsp;OUR PEOPLE ARE HEADED FOR EXTINCTION.&nbsp;&nbsp;Then the scene began to shift, subtly at first and then becoming more and more clear, dust vanished, broken shelving was restored, burnt out lights came back on.&nbsp;&nbsp;BUT WE AT THE SOCIETY FOR THE PRESERVATION OF PARAHUMAN SPECIES BELIEVE WE CAN REVERSE THAT TREND.&nbsp;&nbsp;Finally the human picking over the bones of long-dead parahumans disappeared and the skeleton was replaced by a sickly looking, but alive, panther.&nbsp;&nbsp;Then the door opened and another panther who could have been a copy of the one in the bed, just healthier, wait not healthier just much younger, came through carrying a tray of foodstuffs.&nbsp;&nbsp;The old cat smiled as he saw his clone, for surely that was what the other feline was, placed the tray on a cabinet next to the bed and pulled up a chair.&nbsp;&nbsp;Then the scene shifted to a factory setting, a row of cylindrical glass tanks with robotic arms within laying flesh and sinew over metallic bones inside the tanks.&nbsp;&nbsp;It panned over to a tank with a nearly complete male red fox hanging suspended in the tank while a team of technicians and another male fox, this one with grey hairs spotting his fur, stood nearby.&nbsp;&nbsp;OUR CLONES ARE NOT MERE LUXURIES, THEY ENSURE A FUTURE FOR ALL OF PARAHUMANITY.<br />\t&quot;Tugs at the heartstrings doesn&#039;t it.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I commented on the scene starting to repeat before me.&nbsp;&nbsp;Denal nodded his agreement.<br />\t&quot;Hey, didn&#039;t that Olga Wolf babe say that she was a clone?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I thought back to our first day in Vesta, she had said she was a clone, of the guildmistress of Guild Wolf no less.&nbsp;&nbsp;And there was something else she&#039;d said.<br />\t&quot;She claimed that something called the &#039;SPPS&#039; gave discounts on clones to Guild leaders.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I recalled.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Think this is the SPPS?&quot;<br />\tDenal shrugged, &quot;seems likely.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then he paused, as if in contemplation of something.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Hey, maybe we should all get clones.&nbsp;&nbsp;We can be like one of those human families, me and Cole can be the dads, Aniya can be the mom, but what would that make you?&quot;<br />\tI snorted derisively.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Save it until we have enough money to actually buy clones, I doubt they would charge a bunch of prospectors fresh from Ceres anything less than full price.&nbsp;&nbsp;And last I checked clones were expensive.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Right, right, let&#039;s go find a miners guild then shall we?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Denal held up his wristpad to look up the local listings for the various guilds.&nbsp;&nbsp;Instantly I was reminded of the video, and the titanium alloy bones falling away from the prying hands of a future human looter.<br />***<br />Denal pulled up a map to the dense metal miners guild main office and we walked down there in five minutes.&nbsp;&nbsp;On the way we called up Aniya and Cole and told them to meet us there.&nbsp;&nbsp;Cole was already perched on a street light outside the building by the time we arrived but Aniya took an extra three minutes to trot up.&nbsp;&nbsp;Once everyone had shown up we explained to the others the guild rules that kept us from selling our ores and how it seemed that the only way around them was to join a guild, like the one we were standing outside.<br />\t&quot;Sounds like a stupid rule.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cole commented from atop his perch above the walkway.<br />\t&quot;He said it was because they didn&#039;t have any analysis equipment.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I explained.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Which makes some sense as a cost cutting measure but he also said that he didn&#039;t trust my own assessment.&nbsp;&nbsp;Why should being in a guild make me any better at telling the difference between tungsten and lead?&quot;<br />\t&quot;I don&#039;t know, why don&#039;t we ask them?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Aniya motioned towards the door to suggest that we go in.&nbsp;&nbsp;I figured we might as well see what they had to offer and pressed the intercom button by the door.<br />\tThere was a buzz and the speaker clicked on.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Hello?&quot;<br />\tI answered, &quot;is this the dense metals mining guild?&quot;<br />\t&quot;Yes, do you have an appointment?&quot;<br />\tI hadn&#039;t thought of that.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;No, were we supposed to make one?&quot;<br />\t&quot;It depends on what you are after.&quot;<br />\t&quot;We would like to join.&quot;<br />\tThere was a brief pause, then the speaker crackled again with a response.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Well then, I&#039;ve got the application forms here.&nbsp;&nbsp;I can show you through the process.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;The doors opened and we entered&nbsp;&nbsp;Inside was a small lobby area with some chairs by one wall, and a massive tank of water covering the opposite wall.&nbsp;&nbsp;Inside the tank was a computer terminal of some sort, and a giant octopus.&nbsp;&nbsp;The cephalopod splayed out several tentacles, changed color multiple times, and let loose a couple jets of water, a speaker on the side of the tank came to life.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;So, why do you want to join the guild.&quot;<br />\tI moved over to the side of the tank glass that was closest to the mollusk&#039;s large eye.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;We&#039;re a group of prospectors who just moved here from Ceres.&nbsp;&nbsp;We attempted to sell some tungsten but the buyer stated that he couldn&#039;t take it because we weren&#039;t certified by a guild.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Naturally.&nbsp;&nbsp;Freelancers are too untrustworthy, how can one be sure that their wares are truly saleable.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;A tablet slid out of a slot on the wall opposite of him.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Each of you fill out your personal information, there&#039;s a separate file for everyone on that tablet.&quot;<br />\tAniya picked up the tablet and filled in her information before handing it to me.&nbsp;&nbsp;It was rather straightforward, Name: Argentum, Date of birth: 2069, Gender: neuter, e-mail address, voice comm code, Special Skills: I selected both chemical analysis and emergency medic.&nbsp;&nbsp;For employment history I listed first my work for the corporation that had commissioned my creation, then the Ceres Directorate before the layoffs, and finally my current employment as a freelance prospector.&nbsp;&nbsp;I chose not to fill in any of the optional references, given our status as fugitives from another asteroid.&nbsp;&nbsp;I then passed the tablet to Cole who filled it out and then passed it to Denal who fitted the device back in its slot.<br />\t&quot;All right then.&nbsp;&nbsp;We will need to assess your abilities before accepting your application to join the guild.&nbsp;&nbsp;Tomorrow a representative of the guild will join you on one of your expeditions to observe your techniques and verify your claims.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;The octopus probably had a script written in his translator specifically for this situation.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Zir Argentum, I am scheduling an examination of your analysis skills in three days time.&quot;<br />\tHold on a second there.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;But it takes at least two days to reach any asteroids that haven&#039;t already been claimed.&nbsp;&nbsp;I&#039;d still be out in space at the time of the exam you have scheduled.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Chemical analysts do not accompany miners to the dig sites.&nbsp;&nbsp;Guild rules to keep them safe from unnecessary risks.&nbsp;&nbsp;There aren&#039;t too many parahumans who know how to identify the minerals we extract properly.&quot;<br />\tI did not understand.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;So miners don&#039;t know if they have a load of lanthanides or a chunk of carbon until they get all the way back to port?&nbsp;&nbsp;What if they go broke because they wasted time hauling worthless material when they could have been looking for something more valuable?&quot;<br />\tThe guild clerk released a bit of ink into the waters of his tank at that statement, I suppose I must have surprised him a bit.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;The guild will subsidize your losses, otherwise your dues will comprise 10% of your total profits.&nbsp;&nbsp;The habitat needs carbon too you know.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Come on,&quot; Aniya grabbed my shoulder in a gesture of reassurance.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;We still have enough money left over from the last sale to keep us afloat a little bit longer.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;She was right, the 500,000 qcoins we still retained would be enough to finance another expedition, store the tungsten from the last haul in one of the portside warehouses, and pay for our protection plan for another couple of weeks.<br />\t&quot;All right then.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I said with a bit of reluctance.&nbsp;&nbsp;And we left, headed for an increasingly uncertain future.<br />&emsp;<br />Chapter 7<br />The next morning a grey parrot came to our ship and introduced himself as the observer from the miners guild.&nbsp;&nbsp;I locked up my lab and emptied my cabin, what I couldn&#039;t carry on me was stored in the cargo hold.&nbsp;&nbsp;I would be spending the next four to five days in a moderately priced hotel I had found the night before while my friends were busy working under the scrutiny of some bureaucrat.&nbsp;&nbsp;And I didn&#039;t even have my experiments to keep me from getting bored.<br />\tI spent the rest of that day reading and looking for bootlegged games on the network.&nbsp;&nbsp;The second day I found some locally produced video drama series about a young Protector&#039;s investigator who seemed to uncover a lot of corpses produced by a variety of psychopaths who killed in different distinctive and quite gruesome ways.&nbsp;&nbsp;It managed to hold my interest for a couple hours, impressive for a 15-minute web show.<br />\tEventually there came the big exam that I had been waiting for.&nbsp;&nbsp;Which turned out to be determining the composition of a few vials of iron, platinum, and lead dust.&nbsp;&nbsp;I probably could have told what they were just visually but I put on a show of using the scales and the spectrophotometer to conduct a detailed and highly specific analysis for the benefit of the bored-looking raccoon assessing me.&nbsp;&nbsp;When it was all over he printed out a small plastic card declaring me to be a certified chemical analyst of the heavy metal miners guild and gave it to me for identification.&nbsp;&nbsp;I was starting to think I would have been better off claiming to be a general miner and going with the others.<br />\tFeeling like I should at least try to celebrate or something I went to a somewhat high-priced caf&eacute; for lunch, I&#039;d mostly been eating the algae rations, and ordered a blob of vat-grown beef.&nbsp;&nbsp;I rarely had the chance to eat meat, as even in-vitro animal flesh was expensive several million miles from the nearest pasture, but I felt justified in splurging a little to satisfy my carnivorous instincts this day.<br />\tI&#039;d been sawing at the chunk of artificial meat for nearly fifteen minutes when he showed up.&nbsp;&nbsp;A muscular cross fox wearing synth-leather pants and an open-front shirt that showed off his pecs.&nbsp;&nbsp;He spotted me and walked over to my table.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Looks like you&#039;re having some trouble there.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He stated without so much as a word of introduction.<br />\t&quot;I&#039;m used to algae products.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I replied as I tore off a chunk of meat and popped it in my mouth.&nbsp;&nbsp;I chewed the tough material vigorously for several seconds before swallowing.&nbsp;&nbsp;Who was this guy to suggest that a canine did not know how to eat meat?<br />\t&quot;You should eat meat more often.&nbsp;&nbsp;It&#039;s what our ancestors evolved for.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;True, though he probably meant the foxes that contributed maybe two percent of our DNA rather than the humans who lost their leaf-processing intestines sucking the marrow from gazelle bones.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;My name&#039;s Walker, what about you babe?&quot;<br />\tBabe?&nbsp;&nbsp;I choked down the last of my mouthful and glared at him.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Argen, and for your information I&#039;m neither a girl nor an effeminate boy.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Most female parahumans have human-like mammary glands, probably added in there by a lonely genetic engineer, so I&#039;m not often mistaken for female.&nbsp;&nbsp;However there weren&#039;t very many neuters made, the earlier mentioned motivation issues making us not particularly popular among work crews, so I am frequently taken for a slim male or on occasion a female with smaller than average breasts.<br />\t&quot;Oh really now, I like a challenge sometimes.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He reached his hand towards mine.&nbsp;&nbsp;About that time I realized that he didn&#039;t really smell right, the genetic engineers deliberately chose not to introduce the genes for the distinctive musk my four-legged kin produced but my sense of smell was almost as good as theirs and even without specialized glands there was a subtle difference between each species&#039; scents.&nbsp;&nbsp;That said I&#039;m not entirely sure whether I realized that Walker smelled more dog-like than foxy before or after I felt the band snap around my wrist.<br />\tSurprised I yanked my arm back, I saw a smart handcuff apparently set to close around the first wrist it came across connected by a thin cable to, Walker&#039;s arm, there was no apparent matching cuff on his wrist it was like the cable came straight out of his fur.&nbsp;&nbsp;He pulled my arm back down to the table and flipped his own arm to pin it down.&nbsp;&nbsp;He gave me a wicked looking grin as he told me, &quot;Argentum, chemical analyst on Ceres deep space mining vessel ANQ18K458, you are under arrest for the murder of Kurt, clone of Vice President Cooper.&quot;<br />\tI panicked then, with my left hand I drew my spring-knife and slammed it concealed in my fist on Walker&#039;s arm.&nbsp;&nbsp;Unfortunately the trick I&#039;d imagined where I would pop the blade into my attacker&#039;s flesh didn&#039;t work as well as I&#039;d hoped, the blade hit something tough and seemingly impenetrable and the spring instead sent my arm flying back off his.&nbsp;&nbsp;As I swung back for another hit he caught my blade arm and forced the knife out of my hand.&nbsp;&nbsp;He flung me to the ground and attempted to wrestle me into submission.&nbsp;&nbsp;As I struggled I heard a loud whirring sound and a quadrotor drone with a pair of automatic gauss rifles slung to its undercarriage descended upon the open caf&eacute;.&nbsp;&nbsp;The few customers that had stayed behind to gawk hurriedly ran or bounded away.&nbsp;&nbsp;A loud voice erupted from the drone&#039;s speakers.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Unidentified parahuman!&nbsp;&nbsp;You will cease assaulting this paying customer of the Marquez Guild and explain yourself!&quot;<br />\tWalker scowled at the drone, then hit a space on his right breast before returning his arm to pinning me down.&nbsp;&nbsp;The image of the suggestively dressed cross fox disappeared revealing a bloodhound wearing an armored bodysuit, what looked like spider silk with plates of thick composite or metal spaced strategically all over the suit.&nbsp;&nbsp;I spotted a nick over one of the plates on his cuffed arm where my knife had tried to penetrate.<br />\t&quot;I&#039;m Walker, a bounty hunter for the Ceres Directorate.&nbsp;&nbsp;Ze has committed a crime against the executives of the Directorate and I am here to bring zir to justice.&quot;<br />\t&quot;He was launching missiles at us!&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I objected loudly.&nbsp;&nbsp;But before I could say anything further Walker covered my mouth with my own arm.<br />\tThe drone spoke again.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;You will allow zir to stand up and this drone will accompany you two to the nearest Marquez guard station.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;A pair of red lights on the barrels of each coilgun lit up, presumably the capacitors to the electromagnets.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;You have five seconds to comply.&quot;<br />\tGrudgingly Walker did comply, yanking me up as he stood so that I stumbled onto my feet.&nbsp;&nbsp;He dragged me along as the drone led us, flying backwards to keep its guns on us, to the station.&nbsp;&nbsp;There we were passed on to a group of mostly feline parahumans in riot gear with large gauss pistols slung on their hips next to a shock baton and a pair of smart cuffs similar to the ones binding me to the bounty hunter.<br />\tWe were taken before a massive jaguar whose name tag read &quot;Marquez, Derrick&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp;Was this one of the Guildmaster&#039;s clones that Olga Wolf had mentioned?&nbsp;&nbsp;He glowered at us before demanding, &quot;now what is this all about?&quot;<br />\tWalker was the first to speak.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Twenty-six days ago a freighter piloted by a parahuman known as Kurt went dark near Ceres.&nbsp;&nbsp;Three days later his ship was found floating derelict, the cockpit was shattered and the body of the pilot was in several hundred frozen pieces.&nbsp;&nbsp;There was just barely enough intact genetic material in a severed hand that was found still attached to the steering column to identify the remains as belonging to Kurt.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I could feel myself cringing a bit at the description of the carnage.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;The Directorate decided to investigate all ships that had been in the area of the incident at roughly the same time.&nbsp;&nbsp;The only ship that was unavailable for inspection was the one that zir Argentum here was serving aboard.&nbsp;&nbsp;When the Directorate received a request for references from one of the mining organizations here concerning Argentum and zir companions Denal, Aniya, and Cole we surmised that they were somehow responsible and a bounty was posted.&quot;<br />\tDerrick glanced first at myself, then at Walker, then back at me.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;When the drone intervened you said something about him &quot;launching missiles at you.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Would you care to elaborate?&quot;<br />\tI suppose I&#039;d already blown my chance to insist that I knew nothing of Kurt&#039;s death.&nbsp;&nbsp;I took a deep breath and started to explain.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Twenty-five days ago we were headed back for Ceres after discovering a significant quantity of gold in one of the lesser asteroids.&nbsp;&nbsp;All of a sudden our aft sensor pod suffered damage inflicted by a military grade laser beam.&nbsp;&nbsp;Our pilot, Cole, took us behind another asteroid and we attempted to hide there.&nbsp;&nbsp;That was when the missiles came.&nbsp;&nbsp;Our automated defense turrets detonated the missiles at a safe distance and a few minutes later a ship came around as well.&nbsp;&nbsp;We played dead for a while until the other ship came closer and began to extend docking claws.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I began to dip my head in regret then.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I panicked and assumed manual control of one of our gauss turrets, I fired a stream of slugs across the ship and some of them penetrated the cockpit.&nbsp;&nbsp;I did a spectroscopic analysis of the debris that indicated some of it was organic in nature.&quot;<br />\t&quot;This is ridiculous!&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Walker objected.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Is ze trying to claim that Kurt was a pirate of some kind after zir gold?&nbsp;&nbsp;He was the clone of a high-ranking executive of the Directorate, why would he resort to stealing?&nbsp;&nbsp;For all we know he mined those shiny yellow rocks and ze and zir friends killed him for them.&quot;<br />\t&quot;These are both serious accusations the two of you are making.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Derrick stated flatly.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Do either of you have video recordings of the event in question?&quot;<br />\t&quot;Yes!&nbsp;&nbsp;I have a copy of the video and the sensor logs on my tablet.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Finally I had something I could use to defend myself with.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;It&#039;s in my hotel room.&nbsp;&nbsp;I can give you the address and keycard now.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />\t&quot;Now wait a second!&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Walker had yet another objection.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Those can be faked.&quot;<br />\t&quot;My technical team has a lot of experience with falsified evidence, they&#039;ll be able to tell.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Derrick motioned for two of his subordinates to take the keycard I had drawn from my kilt pocket and go to the hotel room I mentioned.&nbsp;&nbsp;Then he stared at me.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Tell me, piracy is a pretty serious offense pretty much everywhere in the belt last I recall.&nbsp;&nbsp;Why didn&#039;t you think of reporting the incident to the authorities on Ceres?&quot;<br />\t&quot;The Directorate does not recognize self defense as a valid excuse for violence.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I explained.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;And in any case we found out later that he was the clone of a vice president, we figured we were better off taking our chances out here.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Yes, I know how the progeny of the rich and powerful are prone to act.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Derrick shot me a grin that looked disturbingly wolfish for a big cat.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Always thinking that they can get away with anything just because they have an influential relative.&quot;<br />\tTen minutes later my tablet was brought in and the video logs of the event were reviewed behind closed doors in a side room.&nbsp;&nbsp;Fifteen minutes after that the door opened and an officer came back out, apparently they had found no evidence of editing, the footage was raw from the sensors as far as they could tell.<br />\tDerrick called up a still image from the video on his desktop holopad, it displayed the ship that had attacked us.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Is this the victim&#039;s spacecraft?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He asked Walker.<br />\t&quot;Yes, it is.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Walker replied.<br />\tThe apparent leader of the local guild branch advanced the video several frames until the craft had rotated so that the underside, with the missile tubes, was facing the camera.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Looks a bit heavily armed for a freight craft, especially one that makes berth at a habitat that I just confirmed does not allow violence in self-defense.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;The bounty hunter started to form a response but Derrick continued.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I mean, the lasers might be justified as anti-meteor point defense, but the missiles are a bit much don&#039;t you think?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Walker seemed to be gasping for words at this point, but none came.<br />\tWalker slumped forward in defeat.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;All right, all right, I&#039;ll leave Argentum and zir friends alone.&quot;<br />\tDerrick dismissed the image and began entering something that we couldn&#039;t see.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Bounty hunter Walker, you are barred from entering the area of service covered by Guild Marquez.&nbsp;&nbsp;We will also be posting to the board you retrieved our client&#039;s information from and stating that as long as ze is a paying customer of ours bounty hunters will not be allowed to pursue zir.&nbsp;&nbsp;And the video will be mailed to every employee and executive of the Ceres Directorate with a publicly known address.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;The cuff around my wrist was uncoupled and Walker was taken out of the room by a pair of officers.<br />\t&quot;Thank you, I was a bit worried there.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;But as I got up and turned to leave I felt a strong paw grab onto my tail and pull me back.&nbsp;&nbsp;I looked back and saw Derrick Marquez reaching across his desk to grab me.<br />\t&quot;Where do you think you&#039;re going?&nbsp;&nbsp;We&#039;re not done here yet.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I pulled my tail back and sat down again.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;You see, when you and your buddies signed on with us we figured that you were running from conviction for some petty theft or tax evasion or something like that and adjusted your rates accordingly.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He sat back down and leaned back with another wolfish grin on his face.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Killing an executive&#039;s relative is a much more serious offense you see.&nbsp;&nbsp;And as such we incur many more expenses protecting you from bounty hunters and assassins.&nbsp;&nbsp;I&#039;d say that we&#039;d be justified in doubling, or even tripling your premiums.&quot;<br />\tThree thousand qcoins a day, combined with the miners guild dues and mortgage payments (I didn&#039;t want repo men coming after us too)?&nbsp;&nbsp;Not every expedition was as fruitful as the last couple we&#039;d embarked upon, we&#039;d likely go bankrupt within a month or two.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;But you&#039;re solving that problem for good aren&#039;t you?&nbsp;&nbsp;With the posting and the videos?&quot;<br />\tHe laughed disturbingly loudly at that statement.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I could count the number of refugees we cover for whom having evidence of their innocence posted by a bunch of anarchist barbarians removed their bounties on one hand.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He held up three fingers to show what he meant.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Now, V.P. Cooper might take some flack on the local Ceres blogs for making a pirate, maybe he&#039;ll even lose his job.&nbsp;&nbsp;But in our experience that only means he&#039;ll resort to less than legal means of getting his revenge.&nbsp;&nbsp;The next parahumans to come after you might not bother trying to take you alive.&quot;<br />\tI shuddered, the thought of some camo-suited killer planting a blade in my heart or poisoning my nutrients was not a pleasant one.&nbsp;&nbsp;I supposed I could see his reasoning but three times our current rate still seemed a bit excessive.&nbsp;&nbsp;I told him that the most we could afford was double our current payments.<br />\t&quot;Well then, maybe this will convince you to reconsider a bit.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He called up another video from the logs backed up on my tablet.&nbsp;&nbsp;This one showed the incident as we were arriving on the bridge at the start of the battle, the one where Denal yanked me out of Aniya&#039;s slimed pouch, from an angle that quite clearly showed her more private parts.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I don&#039;t know about Ceres but here there&#039;s a significant group of you endophiles.&nbsp;&nbsp;A lot of people think that their neurons are a bit cross-wired and have a tendency to avoid them like the plague, especially those parahumans with pouches, with the exception of a few who make a living prostituting themselves to those freaks, and they&#039;re ostracized just as badly by the rest of their kind.&quot;<br />\tI gripped the arms of my chair like my hands were hydraulic vises.&nbsp;&nbsp;I practically burst out at him, &quot;It&#039;s not sexual to us!&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;And then I amended a bit more calmly.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;And I thought parahumans had no taboos.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Yeah that would be all nice and utopian now wouldn&#039;t it?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He switched off the hologram and leaned in closer to me.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;If everyone were to know what you two get up to in the bedroom, and apparently the bridge, you would be hard pressed to get a job scrubbing out sewage lines.&nbsp;&nbsp;And your friend, Aniya is it?&nbsp;&nbsp;Well she would probably end up having twenty of your filthy sewage scrubber colleagues inside her every night just to pay her protection money to the hookers guild.&nbsp;&nbsp;She might even be picked up by some of the sex slavers that come through here every now and then.&quot;<br />\tThat did it, I couldn&#039;t do mass sanitation work to save my life.&nbsp;&nbsp;And poor Aniya shouldn&#039;t have to live that horrible way just because she helped me relax in such a way.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Okay, okay.&nbsp;&nbsp;I&#039;ll scrape up three times the fee.&nbsp;&nbsp;Just don&#039;t include anything in the video to suggest that I like to sleep in her pouch.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Smart move foxy.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Derrick Marquez said as he slid over a tablet with a form for the new amount for me to sign.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;And don&#039;t even think of telling anyone that I blackmailed you, I too know the advantages of having powerful relatives.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He waved to a printed out photo on the wall behind him, which showed nine nearly identical jaguars, with only their clothes to differentiate them.&nbsp;&nbsp;In the center of the field of view sat a jaguar wearing a closely tailored suit, a scar running down his left cheek marring his features.<br />\tNervously I quickly applied my thumbprint to the document and left.&nbsp;&nbsp;When my crew mates arrived the next day I practically leaped into Aniya&#039;s arms.&nbsp;&nbsp;I spent the entire night and half of the next day huddled up in her pouch, with all the security equipment within five meters of her room disabled.<br />&emsp;<br />Chapter 8<br />&quot;A bounty hunter, seriously?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Denal sounded incredulous.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;How did he even know we were here?&quot;<br />\tIt was the day after my friends had come back from their assessment trip, they&#039;d found a decent sized chunk of something dense and grey, they hadn&#039;t checked what it was officially but the readings I&#039;d seen suggested something in the area of osmium.&nbsp;&nbsp;And they had become certified members of the miners guild, like myself except that they would still be going on these expeditions.&nbsp;&nbsp;Though now I wasn&#039;t too sure I wanted to leave the habitat.<br />\t&quot;He said that he tracked us thanks to the miners guild sending messages asking for references to the Ceres Directorate.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I replied to Denal&#039;s question, he looked a bit guilty about something at my statement.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;And anyways even if one of us wasn&#039;t stupid enough to list some references on their applications there are several financial records that would place us here.&nbsp;&nbsp;The large-scale exchange of our Ceres qcoins for Vesta&#039;s, the mortgage payments we send their way to fend off repossession, et cetera.&nbsp;&nbsp;Probably why he was in the region in the first place, no way he could have flown all the way here from Ceres in the three days since we applied to the guild.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Not necessarily.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cole threw in his opinion.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Vesta is passing fairly close to Ceres now.&nbsp;&nbsp;And there are a lot of ships faster than ours.&nbsp;&nbsp;I&#039;d guess that a bounty hunter would use a fast courier class ship or maybe a military surplus interceptor if they&#039;re chasing people.&nbsp;&nbsp;And maybe we should keep running too, make it harder to find us.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Cole, with the communication relays connecting every station in the belt anywhere we tried to hide would be known everywhere within hours.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I found it a bit hard to believe that he was still determined to leave this place.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;And most governments would have just let him take me, and you too once you&#039;d come into port.&nbsp;&nbsp;The Marquez Guild reviewed the evidence and sent him packing, even if they tripled our rates.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Tripled?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Aniya exclaimed in disbelief.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Can we even afford that?&quot;<br />\tI told her truthfully, &quot;I don&#039;t know.&nbsp;&nbsp;Maybe, it depends on how much we can make&nbsp;&nbsp;off these jobs.&quot;<br />\t&quot;We should move to the Wolf Guild&#039;s territory.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Denal suggested, I suspected he was still a bit infatuated with that rules-bending investigator who had saved our lives on our first day in the asteroid.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I bet Olga would give us a better price than these guys are.&quot;<br />\tYep, definitely infatuated, at least he was leaving me relatively alone now.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Odds are her progenitor would charge us just as much.&nbsp;&nbsp;And that would make the commute to and from the spaceport a regular gauntlet where anyone who wanted to claim our bounty could go after us.&nbsp;&nbsp;Marquez at least will be able to keep us safe from bounty hunters and hit men close by our livelihood.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I neglected to mention the real reason, that being the blackmail that Derrick Marquez had inflicted upon me when he threatened to include what many would take as evidence of perverted sexual practices in the video he sent out as evidence of our justification for killing an executive&#039;s clone.<br />\t&quot;So, what are we going to do if we can&#039;t afford it?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cole asked, probably with a bit of justification but I thought he still sounded overly critical of Vesta&#039;s society.<br />\tI came up with an idea that I thought might work.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I&#039;m not stuck on the ship for extended periods of time anymore.&nbsp;&nbsp;Maybe I could do some more analysis work for the guild while you&#039;re out mining or something.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Surely the miners guild needed all the analysts they could get if we weren&#039;t even allowed in the field.<br />***<br />A week later I found myself in the minute apartment I&#039;d rented looking over job listings.&nbsp;&nbsp;It turned out that being the newest chemist in the miners guild, no matter that I had just as much experience as most of the &quot;senior&quot; members, meant that hardly any jobs were ever thrown your way.&nbsp;&nbsp;I wasn&#039;t even allowed to perform the tests on the osmium sample that my friends had brought back.&nbsp;&nbsp;That load combined with the tungsten we had brought in the previous run had barely netted enough to pay the Marquez clan for another couple weeks.&nbsp;&nbsp;What with the guild&#039;s 10% and the storage fees for the tungsten and other assorted expenses.&nbsp;&nbsp;So they were already out on another expedition to find more heavy metals for the guild to profit off of.<br />\tWait, did I say &quot;clan&quot; when referring to the Marquez Protectors Guild?&nbsp;&nbsp;Oh, right, well about then was when I guess I started to see the Protectors Guilds for what they truly were.&nbsp;&nbsp;Though to be honest it was a web show that I started watching while waiting for the miners guild to send me some work, &quot;Crowns of Furtopia&quot; I think it was.&nbsp;&nbsp;It was this fantasy series that took place on an alternate earth inhabited by parahumans instead of humans and technologically equivalent to 10th century Europe.&nbsp;&nbsp;The main plotline seemed to involve these families, yes they could reproduce in the fictional world of Furtopia, known alternatively as &quot;clans&quot; or &quot;houses&quot; that governed various regions of the country on which the show was set.&nbsp;&nbsp;Apparently the show had gained such a following on Vesta that some of the terminology had seeped out and it wasn&#039;t uncommon to refer to the Protectors Guilds as &quot;house Wolf&quot;, or &quot;clan Marquez&quot; or any of a dozen different variations on those because the leaders of the Guilds had such large clone families.&nbsp;&nbsp;Anyways it was an impressive piece of work, they filmed with live actors wearing replica middle ages clothing and on board one of the few Cole habitats ever constructed that was pretty heavily terraformed, and they edited out the sloped upwards ground and sky to make it look like it was actually on a planet.<br />\tSpeaking of those clone families I had been scrolling through the list of jobs that were currently open on the asteroid when I came across a listing from the Society for the Preservation of Parahuman Species.&nbsp;&nbsp;Curious I opened the entry and found that it was for a position as a biotechnician in their cloning facility.&nbsp;&nbsp;The pay was substantial, with negotiable hours, but what really caught my attention was the line that stated &quot;all insurances, health, property, Protectors Guild, covered entirely.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;If that meant what I thought it meant the job was as good as 99% pure platinum for someone like me, I might even make enough to pay for my friends&#039; insurance.&nbsp;&nbsp;I applied immediately.<br />\tI was taken by surprise an hour later when I received a call from the SPPS on my tablet, they wanted an interview by video chat already.&nbsp;&nbsp;I opened the chat app and was greeted by the image of a large brown creature that looked halfway between a badger and a bear, a wolverine I would later learn.&nbsp;&nbsp;The interviewer directed his large brown eyes at mine and introduced himself.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Good morning Argentum, my name is Caleb Burns and I&#039;m here to determine if you&#039;re the type of parahuman the Society for the Preservation of Parahuman Species needs in order to continue our most worthy goal of ensuring the survival of our culture.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I could barely see more than his head but he seemed to be wearing some sort of white lab coat or possibly a ceremonial robe of some kind with intricate designs of DNA helixes patterned up and down the lapels in gold.<br />\tThat was an interesting question, &quot;the type of parahuman the SPPS needs&quot;?&nbsp;&nbsp;What types of parahumans was he referring to?&nbsp;&nbsp;Species of non-human genes?&nbsp;&nbsp;Skill sets?&nbsp;&nbsp;Body type?&nbsp;&nbsp;I couldn&#039;t tell what he was referring to so I started to talk about my hobbies.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Well, I have been performing my own DNA tests using the genetic material of myself and my crewmates for about four years.&nbsp;&nbsp;Attempting to find the genes that were modified to make me a neuter instead of male or female.&quot;<br />\tThis Caleb being was obviously not too interested in my statement, probably because I had already listed my hobby of messing with the codes of life.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Yes, yes, what exactly was it that persuaded you to apply for this position?&quot;<br />\tI thought that saying &quot;the insurance coverage&quot; wouldn&#039;t be particularly well received so I chose to share the other thing that had attracted me to the opening.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;That advertisement, with the human picking over the remains of parahuman civilization after we&#039;ve all died off.&nbsp;&nbsp;I thought it was rather inspiring.&quot;<br />\tHe stared at me with an expression of surprise on his face.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Really?&nbsp;&nbsp;Those ads worked?&nbsp;&nbsp;I thought they would never convince anyone.&nbsp;&nbsp;You know, the idea of family being too foreign for most parahumans.&quot;<br />\tFamily?&nbsp;&nbsp;Oh, the last scene with the clone taking care of his ailing progenitor.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I suppose some things are just embedded in our genes.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Yes, yes, I suppose they are.&nbsp;&nbsp;The directive to propagate those genes being one of the strongest I suppose.&nbsp;&nbsp;Would explain why the Guildmasters all rushed to support the old man when he offered them additional clones.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;The wolverine suddenly seemed to realize that he&#039;d said something he hadn&#039;t intended to let slip and covered his mouth with two pairs of hands.&nbsp;&nbsp;Or rather one pair of hands and one pair of paws, it seems he was a taur.&nbsp;&nbsp;Slowly, embarrassed, he moved his hands and paws away and continued speaking.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Anyways, speaking of clones what do you think of them?&quot;<br />\tI thought back to the Vice President&#039;s clone who attempted to kill us, and the Marquez clone that threatened to expose certain details of my and Aniya&#039;s lives.&nbsp;&nbsp;And how their progenitors had sought disproportionate retribution for one&#039;s death and the other had apparently enabled his clone to extort extra money from their customer base.&nbsp;&nbsp;But I also recalled the message presented by that ad, and Denal&#039;s half-serious comment about our group getting a bunch of clones once we had enough to commission them all.&nbsp;&nbsp;I thought of the possibility of those powerful people&#039;s clones becoming the entirety of parahumanity within the next century, they might even become the majority within my own lifespan and make my last few years a living hell before I broke down and ceased to be.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I believe that we need to think about our future.&nbsp;&nbsp;And clones are the future for our kind.&quot;<br />\t&quot;That&#039;s good to hear.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Caleb replied.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;It says here that you came to Vesta recently aboard a mining ship originally from Ceres.&nbsp;&nbsp;And that you&#039;re a registered member of the heavy metals miners guild here.&nbsp;&nbsp;Why would you want to join the SPPS when you&#039;re already employed?&quot;<br />\tNot good, I couldn&#039;t tell him why I needed more money, that would be the interview equivalent of suicide.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;They don&#039;t give very many jobs to new chemical analysts, they didn&#039;t even allow me to do the purity control for my former crew&#039;s hauls.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I contemplated whether I should tell him a bit about the high insurance rates I&#039;d been subjected to.<br />\t&quot;And I&#039;ll bet that the Marquez Guild has been extorting a lot of qcoin from you since you just showed up on Vesta, haven&#039;t they?&quot;<br />\tI was instantly horrified at that statement, how much did he know?&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Maybe, a little.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I tried to sound calm but was finding it difficult.<br />\t&quot;Well, don&#039;t worry about that.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Caleb Burns shot me a wink and smiled.&nbsp;&nbsp; &quot;Jakob Griggs and Jerome Marquez are old buddies, I&#039;m sure if you sign on he&#039;ll figure out a way to cut your rates down a bit.&quot;<br />\tCut my rates?&nbsp;&nbsp;How much influence did the SPPS have?&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I was under the impression that all insurances would be covered.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Well,&quot; Caleb shrugged and slicked the fur on his head back.&nbsp;&nbsp;I could guess that I had caught him in something.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Technically it&#039;s deducted from your paycheck, but we can usually convince them to lower their rates significantly, and the pay we offer is considerable in and of itself.&quot;<br />\t&quot;How much is &#039;considerable&#039;?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I found myself asking.<br />\tHe quoted me a rather respectable pay rate, not quite enough for me to live on with the increased Marquez fees.&nbsp;&nbsp;But if he was telling the truth about the Society&#039;s leader having the ability to lower the insurance paid by his employees, I might even be able to help cover my crewmates as well.&nbsp;&nbsp;I agreed to come over to their facilities and take a look around.<br />***<br />The Society&#039;s headquarters was a five-story building built into the cave wall of the cavern covered by the Marquez Guild.&nbsp;&nbsp;The front face of the structure was halfway covered with animated holograms similar to the one I had seen earlier, along with murals of DNA helixes and parahumans in biofabrication tanks and other stuff like that.&nbsp;&nbsp;I walked up to the front doors made of stained glass showing a nude male savannah cat with his arms and legs spread out in a pattern that made it look like he had four arms and four legs.&nbsp;&nbsp;Wonder what that was supposed to mean?<br />\tCaleb Burns was standing by the front counter in the main lobby, my guess that he was a taur was correct, and he had somehow managed to tie his robe slash lab coat in such a way that it enclosed his hind legs without showing anything.&nbsp;&nbsp;He saw me and gave a slight bow in my direction.&nbsp;&nbsp;I returned the gesture.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Hello, Argentum, welcome to our humble cloning laboratory for the preservation of the parahuman clade.&nbsp;&nbsp;Are you ready to begin the tour?&quot;<br />\tI told him &quot;yes&quot; and the wolverine in a robe turned to a sealed hatch next to the counter, it was marked &quot;Decontamination chamber&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp;He swung it open and gestured for me to follow.&nbsp;&nbsp;We found ourselves in a room filled with light environment suits hung on racks in a variety of shapes and sizes.&nbsp;&nbsp;Caleb removed his robe and wriggled into a large taur-shaped suit, I did the same with my kilt and vest and a medium bipedal suit with a large enough tail.<br />\t&quot;Through this door is our main production floor.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He explained, speaking through an external speaker on the front of his suit.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;We have a lot of delicate equipment and biological substances out there.&nbsp;&nbsp;The last thing we need is contamination from loose fur or someone breathing too hard.&quot;<br />\tI supposed I could understand that.&nbsp;&nbsp;Though I had to wonder about the state of my own experiments seeing how I hadn&#039;t bothered with airtight seals on my safety equipment.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Will this be where I will be working?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I asked him.<br />\t&quot;Part of the time, you&#039;ll probably be in quality control.&nbsp;&nbsp;Making sure there&#039;s no unforeseen mutations in the cell cultures.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He rattled off fairly quickly.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Most of your work will be done in the side labs.&quot;<br />\tHe opened the other door and we walked out into a massive room that probably qualified as a cavern in its own right.&nbsp;&nbsp;There were at least three stories worth of machinery, all chugging along and mixing some vat of cells or pumping some fluid into a tank like the one the clone at the end of the ad emerged from.&nbsp;&nbsp;One of the tanks had a bluish skeleton inside, which brought to mind the long-decayed corpse in the same ad, while another adjacent tank had a body that was almost complete, half covered in a layer of skin.<br />\t&quot;You&#039;ll mostly be coming out here to take samples from the cell cultures.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He pointed at a set of small vats hanging suspended above one of the biofabrication tanks.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;It&#039;s almost completely automated.&nbsp;&nbsp;All we need to keep this running are a couple of technicians who perform maintenance and repairs every few weeks.&quot;<br />\tWe came to a stairway leading upwards to a large room with a glass wall facing the production floor.&nbsp;&nbsp;Through it I could see a half-dozen parahumans of various species in hazmat suits fussing over a variety of beakers, test tubes, petri dishes, and gene sequencers similar to the ones I had on our ship but obviously much more expensive.&nbsp;&nbsp;As we entered, a tall male who appeared to be a spotted cat of some sort, possibly a savannah cat like the one on the front door, approached us.<br />\t&quot;This is Maximus Griggs, he is the supervisor of this team.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Caleb introduced the tall feline as.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Maximus, this is Argentum, ze is interested in the open position here.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Good to see you Silver.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He gave me a rather cat-like smile as he said this.&nbsp;&nbsp;I guessed that he knew enough ancient Greek to know what my name meant.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;You have any prior experience with genetic testing and mutation screening?&quot;<br />\t&quot;I&#039;ve performed some experiments on my own.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I began to tell him.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Trying to engineer nutrient algae that tasted like bacon.&nbsp;&nbsp;And performing DNA tests on myself to figure out why the parts shops can&#039;t make me a set of sexual organs.&quot;<br />\t&quot;You&#039;re neuter then?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Max inquired quizzically.&nbsp;&nbsp;Not that I didn&#039;t blame him, even without this baggy suit it was hard to tell my actual gender, or lack thereof.&nbsp;&nbsp;I nodded.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Well, we do some organ replacement and augmentation on the side.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;My ears perked up, which I&#039;m sure was noticeable even under that suit of mine.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;We found that we can give neuters a cock or a vag, or even both, but unfortunately the gonads require genetic alterations that cause the immune system to reject them without a lot of drugs.&quot;<br />\tMy ears flicked downwards in disappointment.&nbsp;&nbsp;What good would a pole or a hole be without the sex drive to use them?&nbsp;&nbsp;And I was still a bit in denial of the drive I had at that point.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Well, I hope I have the chance to contribute to something a bit more important here.&quot;<br />\t&quot;You will.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;The savannah cat told me.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;We&#039;re building the future for all of the diverse parahuman species here.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He waved back at the production floor we&#039;d just left.<br />\tAt that moment something about his name clicked in my head and I realized that it sounded a bit familiar.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Are you by any chance related to Jakob Griggs, the founder of the SPPS?&quot;<br />\tMaximus snorted loudly at my inquiry.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Oh, I&#039;m related all right.&nbsp;&nbsp;I&#039;m one of his clones.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I was afraid of that, would he act like two-thirds of the other clones I&#039;d met?&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;But dad wasn&#039;t the founder, that was his progenitor, who was simply named Griggs.&nbsp;&nbsp;He died in an accident a year before me and my brothers were decanted.&quot;<br />\tHe was a clone of a clone?&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Sounds like he&#039;s a bit young to be running something this important.&quot;<br />\tThe second-generation clone smiled at me before speaking further.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Maybe but we learn fast you know.&nbsp;&nbsp;Look at me, I&#039;m barely two years old and already I&#039;m supervising an entire lab.&quot;<br />\tSo the same nepotism I&#039;d seen on Ceres and in the Marquez Guild existed here too.&nbsp;&nbsp;At least the one who would be my boss seemed agreeable enough.&nbsp;&nbsp;And the pay and benefits package were pretty good.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;So, where do I sign?&quot;<br />&emsp;<br />Chapter 9<br />I started work the next day.&nbsp;&nbsp;It wasn&#039;t particularly difficult work mind you but I was being entrusted with the wellbeing of the future people of Vesta.&nbsp;&nbsp;So I was started off with detecting mutations in previously tested samples.&nbsp;&nbsp;On one occasion I found one deletion in the 13th chromosome that my instructor hadn&#039;t found, he claimed that I had made a mistake and started to go over the sequence again, only to notice one of the codons was missing an adenosine.&nbsp;&nbsp;He changed my assessment and mumbled something about how it must have happened after his own analysis.&nbsp;&nbsp;Regardless I found myself making almost as much as my share of a decent haul of ore back before we moved to Vesta and I was forced to leave the ship.&nbsp;&nbsp;And they made good on their promise to arrange for my Protection rates to be lowered, I still paid more than I had my first couple weeks in the asteroid but it was now affordable.&nbsp;&nbsp;Unfortunately there was only a couple hundred qcoins left after expenses to help my friends pay their fees, I sincerely hoped that they found some more valuable minerals like the mascon we had found just before the incident.<br />\tMy job wasn&#039;t simply to detect mutations, it was also to determine whether a mutation was worth fixing.&nbsp;&nbsp;Many mutations, a few extra letters in an intron here, an alu element deleted there, were harmless and would have no effect on the parahuman being printed out.&nbsp;&nbsp;If there was something that actually changed the phenotype though, such as hemophilia, we then had to decide whether it would be more cost-effective to try and correct the defect with gene therapy, or throw out that batch and grow another one.&nbsp;&nbsp;Both would add significantly to the customer&#039;s final bill for the clone, the relative expense of either option depending largely on what stage the mutation was caught at.&nbsp;&nbsp;Preferably the mutations were to be caught early on, before too many nutrients had been expended growing defective cells.&nbsp;&nbsp;We had a database of several common genetic diseases, but sometimes we came across a deviation that we lacked a prior record for, in those cases we had a simulator.<br />\tThe simulator had access to several times the total combined processing power of every computer that existed on the planet earth during the first couple decades of the 21st century.&nbsp;&nbsp;Now of course every major university on earth had a far more powerful machine than ours but it was still greater than most parahumans&#039; entire guild or corporation&#039;s combined computing strength.&nbsp;&nbsp;And our simulator used every microsecond of its immense CPU cycles predicting the results of the completely unheard of mutations we fed into it.&nbsp;&nbsp;The results we got out of it were often astonishingly bizarre, one time it predicted that the fur of any parahuman fabricated with the mutation in question would grow in fluorescent green, another time it predicted that the cells would undergo apoptosis in 300-600 generations, we kept a sample from that one to confirm and indeed the cells did liquefy after 413 divisions.&nbsp;&nbsp;Then one day, about two months after I had started working full time in the lab and discarded my miners guild membership entirely, I came across a deletion in the promoter region of a certain gene that changed everything.<br />\tPROMOTER TO MOR10X-6 ENCODING GENE DISABLED, the readout from the simulator declared.&nbsp;&nbsp;PROTEIN MOR10X-6 EXPRESSION MINIMAL TO NON-EXISTANT, POSSIBLE RESUMPTION OF MEIOTIC DIVISION.<br />\tMeiosis?&nbsp;&nbsp;As in the form of cellular division whereby cells divide into cells with half the minimum number of chromosomes in preparation for fusion with another cell that lacks a full complement of chromosomes.&nbsp;&nbsp;I opened the genetic database and attempted to look up MOR10X-6.&nbsp;&nbsp;What I got was a message stating CLEARANCE REQUIRED, PLEASE INPUT REGISTRATION NUMBER AND PASSWORD.<br />\tConfused I showed it to Maximus.&nbsp;&nbsp;He took one look at it and shrugged.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;A lot of our equipment and data comes from loot seized from the biogenesis corporations in the revolution.&nbsp;&nbsp;Occasionally you come across something that they tried to lock up, keep hidden from us peons and slaves.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He then did something completely in violation of safety regulations, he opened his containment suit and started fishing around for something.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Some hackers cracked the codes a while ago and sold them to the SPPS, I&#039;ve got them written down here somewhere.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He explained, pulling out a folded square of flexible plastic.&nbsp;&nbsp;There were apparently a set of numbers and passwords printed on the inside fold of the plastic, as he entered three different sets of codes into the tablet before access was granted to the restricted files.&nbsp;&nbsp;When it opened he held the tablet up to his face, obscuring it from my view.&nbsp;&nbsp;As he read his expression changed from confusion, to surprise, then something I couldn&#039;t quite identify.&nbsp;&nbsp;He passed me the tablet.<br />\tI read the proffered entry.&nbsp;&nbsp;It was just as I suspected, MOR10X-6 was an artificial gene constructed by an agronomics corporation in the first quarter of the 21st century to protect genetic copyrights.&nbsp;&nbsp;It produced a protein that interfered in the process of meiotic division, making it all but impossible to proceed but allowing the gonads to otherwise function normally, apparently creating a healthy but infertile genetically modified organism that would not go around pirating their intellectual property all willy-nilly.&nbsp;&nbsp;In other words, it was the gene that made us reliant on cloning.<br />\t&quot;This, is serious.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Was all I could think to say at that time.&nbsp;&nbsp;It was certainly true, if a bit of an understatement, perhaps the biggest one of the century.<br />\t&quot;I need to show this to my dad.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Max grabbed the tablet back from me and held it tightly to his chest as he ran off to alert his progenitor.&nbsp;&nbsp;Expressing an exasperated sigh I picked out another tablet and returned to my work.<br />***<br />Approximately an hour and a half later I was called up to Jakob Griggs&#039; office.&nbsp;&nbsp;I handed my current project off to a co-worker and walked out towards the elevator.&nbsp;&nbsp;The elevator car had seven buttons inside, one for each of the floors, one for a sublevel basement cut into the cavern floor, and another that was accessible only by biometric scan or remote operation.&nbsp;&nbsp;Before I could look up which floor the head of the Society&#039;s office was on the elevator started moving upwards.&nbsp;&nbsp;It went up, past the fifth floor to something marked with a &quot;J&quot; on the electronic readout.&nbsp;&nbsp;As I stood dumbfounded the door opened onto a wide open space overlooking the city below.&nbsp;&nbsp;It appeared that Jakob Griggs worked on the roof of the building.<br />\tIn the middle of the expanse there stood a large table covered with food items that I had only seen in images and video before.&nbsp;&nbsp;Stuffed turkeys, carved t-bone steaks, lobster, ham with the bone still inside.&nbsp;&nbsp;How much had that whole thing cost?&nbsp;&nbsp;On a chair at the far side of the table sat a savannah cat, like Maximus, wearing a black robe embroidered with crystals forming the shapes of DNA helixes.&nbsp;&nbsp;He raised his head to glance at me as I slowly, nervously came forward.<br />\t&quot;Ahh, Argentum.&nbsp;&nbsp;Good to finally meet you.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He spoke to me in the same voice as my supervisor.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Please, get yourself into something more comfortable and join me for lunch.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He gestured to my right and I followed his hand with my eyes.<br />\tI saw a coat rack with a white robe in the same patterns as the one Caleb Burns had been wearing when we first met, though fitted and sized more for a biped of my height and weight.&nbsp;&nbsp;I looked down at my own bulky and uncomfortable containment suit.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Oh, I guess this would be a bit awkward to eat in.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;But then I noticed a lack of enclosed spaces to change in.<br />\tJakob saw me looking around puzzled and chortled loudly.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Don&#039;t worry.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He made a show of covering his eyes with the sleeve of his own robe.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I won&#039;t look.&quot;<br />\tI supposed I could see where Maximus got his humor from.&nbsp;&nbsp;I unzipped myself from my hazmat suit as quickly as possible and threw the robe on, hopefully he wouldn&#039;t mind my getting sweat all over it.&nbsp;&nbsp;It was surprisingly comfortable, like it was made from soft plant fibers instead of the bacterial plastics we made most of our clothes from in the belt.&nbsp;&nbsp;It must have been made from materials imported from earth, like the feast before me.<br />\tI stepped awkwardly towards the chair on the opposite end of the table, presumably where I was meant to sit.&nbsp;&nbsp;At the sound of the chair legs scraping along the floor Mr. Griggs put his arm back down and saw me cautiously sitting down.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I take it you&#039;ve never had real meat before Mx. Argentum?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He inquired, to which my only answer was a short nod.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Not surprising, it is quite expensive to import anything from earth or Mars to begin with.&nbsp;&nbsp;Perishable items such as animal flesh even more so.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He speared another piece of steak on his fork and raised it to his mouth before speaking again.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Please, try the chicken, it&#039;s unlikely you&#039;ll get another chance to try it soon.&quot;<br />\tKnowing he was right, and finding the fragrance too hard to resist I tore off a leg from the roasted bird in the center of the table.&nbsp;&nbsp;Discovering it difficult to keep my manners I tore into it with a ferocity I found hidden deep within the few genes I had not inherited from any human.&nbsp;&nbsp;I had eaten vat-grown poultry before, partially to see Cole&#039;s reaction to my consuming tissue from his own taxonomic class (not much it turns out, apparently corvids are as close to fowl as foxes are to cows or something along those lines), but this bore little resemblance.&nbsp;&nbsp;This was juicy, tender, with a crisp skin that the tissue vats seemed to leave out.&nbsp;&nbsp;Within a matter of minutes I had stripped the leg to the bone.<br />\tAs I tossed the oddly white and flexible bone aside Jakob Griggs spoke up again.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;That was actually the turkey but whatever you prefer.&rdquo;&nbsp;&nbsp;I made a vain effort to keep my embarrassment from showing but apparently he could see it anyways.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Don&#039;t worry about it.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He told me with a dismissive wave of his hand.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I&#039;m sure this is the first time you&#039;ve been able to tell the difference between one meat or the other.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;But then his expression changed all of a sudden, becoming ice cold as he stared at me from across the table.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;So, I hear you found out about one of the corps biggest secrets.&quot;<br />\tI think I felt my fur stand up at that simple statement, something about the tone those ordinary words were issued in made me feel a chill.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Well.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I started to say, a bit nervous and taken off guard by the sudden shift in his demeanor.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;It was completely by accident, but I believe I discovered a mutation that deactivates the gene that renders us, I mean you and other parahumans with sex organs, infertile.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I had to correct myself, there was definitely more than just one simple gene that prevented neuters like myself from making babies.<br />\t&quot;I see.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Jakob told me as he reached for a small box on the table with a set of holes in the lid.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;And just what do you intend to do with that mutation?&quot;<br />\t&quot;Me?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I asked incredulously.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Well, I doubt I would do much with it, but I suppose one could use a targeted mutagen to damage the gene and enable their testes or ovaries to undergo spermatogenesis or oogenesis respectively.&nbsp;&nbsp;Possibly even use a CRISPr technique to knock out the entire gene.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;The equipment to do either was fairly plentiful, it was far safer than gene therapy to simply create a compound that would bond to a specific gene sequence and destroy it in the rare instance of a harmful mutation that involved an addition rather than a deletion or transposition.<br />\t&quot;Yes,&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He then shot me a look that made me shrink back into my seat in primal fear.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;And what do you think would happen to the Society for the Preservation of Parahuman Species if parahumans began to use that mutagen you&#039;re suggesting and started replicating themselves on their own?&quot;<br />\tI paused as I thought about it for a minute.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Most people wouldn&#039;t need clones, they&#039;d just find a friend of the opposite gender and produce new parahumans like most natural animals and humans do.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I realized at that moment that my job could be at stake.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;But there would still be neuters like myself who would still need clones to continue their genelines.&nbsp;&nbsp;And some people who simply prefer clones for some reason.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I thought of one more thing.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;And besides, wouldn&#039;t your goal of preserving parahumanity be accomplished?&quot;<br />\tJakob let out a low growl, my ears flattened and I felt my head slipping down beneath my robe, attempting to hide from the large and angry predator before me.&nbsp;&nbsp;He addressed me once more.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Our goal doesn&#039;t just encompass creating the next generation so that our species outlive our individual selves.&nbsp;&nbsp;There are other factors that we don&#039;t generally discuss with the public.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He shook the box he had picked up a minute earlier and I could hear a faint squeaking sound from within.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Are you familiar at all with the net series &#039;Crowns of Furtopia&#039;?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He asked me, I nodded faintly yes and he continued.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Feudalism is the default state of any large group of animals, individuals work to preserve their own genelines and band together with their kin to compete with other kin groups.&nbsp;&nbsp;The smart ones get the weaker groups to produce resources for them in exchange for protection from more short-sighted opportunists.&nbsp;&nbsp;Human history has proven time and time again that in the absence of any other form of government feudalism re-emerges.&nbsp;&nbsp;And I am sure that you are starting to see that to be true here on Vesta as well.&quot;<br />\tI thought back to the pop culture references to the Protectors Guilds as clans and houses, and how every high-ranking official in the Guilds that I&#039;d met had been clones of the Guild leaders, and what they were getting away with because of their relationship.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;But, your progenitor was the one who enabled them to form kinship groups in the first place?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I asked him nervously.<br />\t&quot;Yes, and that is how I continue to keep them in line.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Jakob Griggs let out another toothy grin that somehow intimidated me more than his growl had.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;If I weren&#039;t able to threaten them with the revocation of their access to my cloning tanks they would be constantly fighting one another over territory like the animals they are.&nbsp;&nbsp;As is the balance of power between the Protection Guilds is as unstable as a barrel of nitroglycerin.&quot;<br />\tI believed that I understood now.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;And you think if they were able to perpetuate their genelines on their own they would turn Vesta into a 22nd century version of Furtopia?&quot;<br />\t&quot;I know they will.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Jakob informed me as he opened the box he was holding.&nbsp;&nbsp;He reached inside and withdrew a live mouse.&nbsp;&nbsp;I was amazed, that was the first time I had ever seen a non-sentient animal.&nbsp;&nbsp;My unspoken question of what he intended to do with the mouse was answered when he sung his head back, opened his mouth, and dropped the mouse in.&nbsp;&nbsp;There was a sickening snap and crunch of bones breaking and he swallowed loudly.&nbsp;&nbsp;Licking the remaining blood from his lips he started to explain.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Live mice, expensive even by my standards.&nbsp;&nbsp;Do you want to know why they&#039;re so expensive?&quot;<br />\t&quot;Because the freighters need extra life support to keep them alive all the way out to the belt?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I feebly suggested.<br />\t&quot;That is the bulk of it, yes.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Jakob nodded in response.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;But another expense is the sterilization procedures they have to perform on every one of the mice before they leave earth orbit.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Puzzled I gave him a confused expression prompting him to continue.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;If so many as one male and one female mouse are fertile in the same cargo module, they will inevitably find a way to mate and produce dozens of baby mice every few weeks.&nbsp;&nbsp;And each of those babies will be able to make more babies within a month of birth.&nbsp;&nbsp;By the time they get all the way out here the life support system of their module is overtaxed and you get a load of decaying mouse carcasses.&nbsp;&nbsp;Do you see my point?&quot;<br />\tI was afraid I didn&#039;t, but I wasn&#039;t sure I wanted to tell the very sure of himself cat that essentially owned all the law enforcement organizations on the asteroid that so I just stayed silent.<br />\tApparently my silence was answer enough as he spoke again.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Sapient beings are no different.&nbsp;&nbsp;Humans almost depleted their own ecosystem on earth, it&#039;s the whole reason they sent us out into space to obtain more resources for them to consume.&nbsp;&nbsp;By controlling the price of cloning we prevent Vesta from becoming overpopulated and overstraining the flimsy life support systems we have in place.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Surely, people are smart enough to stop reproducing before they reach the carrying capacity of their environment?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I objected, I could not imagine anyone being so stupid.<br />\t&quot;And are you willing to bet the lives of everyone on this asteroid, possibly the entire belt, on that statement?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I could not, that was too big a decision for me to make, I slumped my head forward and shook it lightly.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;So, you will not tell anyone else about your discovery?&quot;<br />\t&quot;Yes,&quot; I told him with an expression of defeat plain on my face.<br />\t&quot;Excellent.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Jakob Griggs said before popping another mouse into his mouth.&nbsp;&nbsp;After swallowing he asked me another question.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Did you tell anyone else before coming here?&quot;<br />\t&quot;Just your clone, Maximus.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Good, I&#039;ve already told him why he should keep his mouth shut.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Jakob looked back into the box of mice one last time and turned back to me.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;It appears that I have no more appetite for mice today, but there is still one left here.&nbsp;&nbsp;Would you care to try it?&quot;<br />\tAt that point, I was afraid to refuse anything he asked of me.&nbsp;&nbsp;I walked up to his side of the table and glanced down at the box.&nbsp;&nbsp;There was one white mouse remaining, among the stains left by its siblings in the container, still trying in vain to scurry up the slick walls of the box.&nbsp;&nbsp;I reached in and tried to grab it but it ran away to try and vault the opposite wall, I reached in with my other hand and managed to herd it between the two.&nbsp;&nbsp;At that point I managed to take hold of its tail and pulled it out by the thin appendage.&nbsp;&nbsp;Screeching in terror it tried to wriggle out of my hand, attempting to curl back on my fingers and claw at them, but to no avail.&nbsp;&nbsp;Looking into its beady black eyes I steeled myself for what would come next, I opened my mouth and tried to lead the rodent inside.&nbsp;&nbsp;Still clinging to a faint hope of survival it gripped onto my tongue with its sharp toes, the pain instead prompted me to bite down hard.&nbsp;&nbsp;I heard the ribs crack, felt the squishy organs spill out of the holes in its torso, the hot blood streaming down my chin.&nbsp;&nbsp;Not knowing exactly what to do next I flicked the corpse to the back of my mouth with my tongue, and with a great deal of effort swallowed.<br />\t&quot;You have a bit of something there.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Jakob Griggs, the shadowy director of the anarchy of Vesta, gestured to his left cheek.&nbsp;&nbsp;I picked up a napkin and dabbed it at the approximate area he had indicated, it came back stained dark red.&nbsp;&nbsp;If I had been superstitious I might have taken it as an omen of things to come.<br />&emsp;<br />Chapter 10<br />A few days after my encounter with my all-powerful employer I was eating dinner with my former crewmates.&nbsp;&nbsp;Nothing anywhere near the quality of that veritable feast Jakob Griggs had, just some flavored lichen-based foodstuffs that grew in some of the smaller caves set aside for food production.&nbsp;&nbsp;To be honest, I hadn&#039;t had much of an appetite after that eventful luncheon.&nbsp;&nbsp;I was cutting up a greenish loaf when Cole spoke.<br />\t&quot;It&#039;s funny,&quot; he said to no one in particular.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Just a couple days ago all our rates went up 10%.&nbsp;&nbsp;Wonder what changed this time?&quot;<br />\t&quot;No idea.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I suggested.&nbsp;&nbsp;To be honest I had no idea what he was talking about, my own rates hadn&#039;t changed since I started working for the SPPS.&nbsp;&nbsp;Why would everyone else&#039;s rise?<br />\t&quot;Well, I asked some of the boys and girls I know by the docks.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Denal offered his own thoughts.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;They said that Marquez hadn&#039;t upped their own bills by any significant amount.&quot;<br />\t&quot;So, it&#039;s just us?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Said Aniya, who was tearing off chunks of two whole loaves of lichen bread as we were talking.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;You think it&#039;s because of the whole bounty hunter thing?&quot;<br />\t&quot;Doubt it, it&#039;s been weeks.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Cole said.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Unless something else happened with Argen over in the genetics labs.&quot;<br />\tI paused for a second, I couldn&#039;t tell them anything about MOR10X-6, I had promised Jakob I wouldn&#039;t tell anyone.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;No, nothing like that.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Which was true, in the vaguest of sense.&nbsp;&nbsp;I had not encountered any bounty hunters or anything like that.&nbsp;&nbsp;<br />\t&quot;Here&#039;s an idea,&quot; Denal suggested, which probably meant it was doomed to fail.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;That Derrick Marquez guy is just a big bully, like that V.P.&#039;s kid we splattered out by Ceres.&nbsp;&nbsp;He&#039;s not used to people standing up to him, so how about we miss a payment or two, and when he comes over looking for money we firmly, and with our weapons well at hand, tell him we&#039;re not paying the increased rate.&quot;<br />\tIt was a bad idea, I could tell from the start that it was a bad idea.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Look,&quot; I told him.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I still have some money left over after the insurance deductions.&nbsp;&nbsp;I could give it all to you guys and just live off the algal dole.&quot;<br />\t&quot;And what about when the premiums get too high for even that to help?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Aniya threw in her own opinion.<br />\tI honestly hadn&#039;t thought of that possibility, though to be honest I doubted my income could make much of a difference as is.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Look,&quot; I started to say instead.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;You do not want to fight this guy.&nbsp;&nbsp;You just don&#039;t.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Maybe you don&#039;t, Argen, but the rest of us do.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Even Cole was in on this idiotic plan.&nbsp;&nbsp;What was going on here?&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;You don&#039;t have to participate but we are going to convince him to stop charging us such exorbitant prices one way or another.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Fine then!&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I informed them with maybe a bit of anger evident in my voice.&nbsp;&nbsp;I threw down my utensils and got up to storm out.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Just don&#039;t come running to me when you need to pay your medical bills after this fiasco goes down.&quot;<br />***<br />The next day I headed down to the ship after work thinking that maybe I&#039;d reacted a bit harshly to their plan, and that maybe I should have offered some more coherent arguments as to why it would be a bad idea to try to intimidate Derrick Marquez into lowering our payments.&nbsp;&nbsp;All day I had been thinking of new arguments that I hoped would persuade them more effectively.&nbsp;&nbsp;But all those ideas were dashed from my mind as I came around the bend and saw Marquez enforcers setting up a perimeter of yellow tape around the docking tunnel to our vessel.<br />\t&quot;What&#039;s going on here?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I asked the nearest officer, an almost two meter tall tiger.<br />\tHis response was to hold a camera up to my face and run my image through a tablet app.&nbsp;&nbsp;When he read the results he glared down at me, and instead of answering my question he issued a question, or rather a demand, of his own.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Where is the red panda known by &#039;Denal&#039;!&quot;<br />\tWhat?&nbsp;&nbsp;They wanted Denal?&nbsp;&nbsp;Had he tried something stupid already?&nbsp;&nbsp;The only response I could think to give was a short &quot;I&hellip; don&#039;t know.&quot;<br />\tThe tiger did not seem pleased by this answer.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;You liar.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He grabbed the front of my shirt and drew me close.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;You two were on the same policy as the victims, you must have some idea of where he ran off to.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Leave zim.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;A disturbingly familiar voice came from a gurney set up by the Guild vehicle parked next to the tunnel entrance.&nbsp;&nbsp;On the propped up stretcher was the one cat I least wanted to see at that time.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Ze&#039;s with Griggs.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Said Derrick Marquez, the corrupt clone of the Marquez clan&#039;s leader.<br />\tThe enforcer dropped me and stalked off, back to whatever it was he had been assigned to do.&nbsp;&nbsp;Cautiously I approached the commander, I saw that his stomach was bandaged, and that he was essentially confined to his impromptu bed by a set of intravenous tubes and straps to his legs.<br />\t&quot;What&hellip;&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I asked, afraid of what the answer might be.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;What was he talking about?&quot;<br />\tDerrick snorted, even such as simple gesture appeared to take a great deal of effort in his condition.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;What do you think happened?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;He lifted a hand to point towards the interior of the ground car next to him.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Your raccoon buddy went nuts and shot your other two friends.&nbsp;&nbsp;Then when I tried to stop him he attempted to run me through with a sword.&quot;<br />\tI looked in the direction he was pointing.&nbsp;&nbsp;There sitting on the bed of the transport lay several items in plastic bags tagged with numbers for reference.&nbsp;&nbsp;One bag had Denal&#039;s longsword, the thin blade snapped in half.&nbsp;&nbsp;Aniya and Cole&#039;s dart guns were in another pair of bags, next to them a couple of darts that had apparently been fired.&nbsp;&nbsp;But the interior of the vehicle was dominated by a pair of very large opaque bags that were zipped shut, one was just a little over one meter long, the other well over three.<br />\t&quot;Are they&hellip;&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I started to ask, but couldn&#039;t bring myself to complete the sentence.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;They can&#039;t be, I was just having dinner with them last night.&nbsp;&nbsp;It&#039;s not possible.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Afraid so, silver.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Marquez scion&#039;s voice was calm and controlled, as if this kind of thing were routine.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;The darts Denal shot them with where loaded with massive doses of hydrogen cyanide, they were dead within minutes.&quot;<br />\t&quot;But those are Aniya and Cole&#039;s guns.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I objected, still unable to grasp the reality laid out before me.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;They would never put something so lethal in their darts, they hated killing.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Then I guess you didn&#039;t know your crewmates as well as you thought you did.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Derrick Marquez started to lift himself up off his stretcher to turn towards me.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;I suggest you go home and go to bed early, this is a lot to deal with.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then his eyes lit up in a moment of sadistic glee.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Unless, this was your home, wasn&#039;t it?&nbsp;&nbsp;Well too bad because we&#039;re seizing it as evidence.&nbsp;&nbsp;You might be able to retrieve some of your things in two to six weeks depending on how long the paperwork takes to process.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Hope you can handle the mortgage payments.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I said in a weak attempt at a witty comeback as I slowly walked away in the direction of the apartment I had called home for five nights out of each of the last five weeks.&nbsp;&nbsp;Once I made it there I found myself taking Derrick Marquez&#039;s advice, I piled every blanket and pillow in the apartment on top of the bed and burrowed underneath them.&nbsp;&nbsp;It was no substitute for Aniya&#039;s pouch, that would never again offer me the comfortable safety I had felt inside it.&nbsp;&nbsp;By the time I crawled out to inform Maximus that I wouldn&#039;t be coming in to work the following morning the sheets were stained with sweat and tears.<br />***<br />I spent the day following the deaths of two of my closest and only friends and the disappearance of the third sitting in my bedroom wrapped in a blanket and watching video streams.&nbsp;&nbsp;Having fully realized that I was living in a feudal nightmare I lost my taste for Crowns of Furtopia and began watching comedy shows.&nbsp;&nbsp;There were hundreds of antique human comedies on the net, watching our great creators whacking each other on the heads with hammers never got old, as well as original parahuman works, often commenting on current events in one asteroid or another.&nbsp;&nbsp;But then one of the not-so-serious news feeds I was watching led me to one that was serious, and a bit personal.<br />\tThis was a video titled &quot;Newcomer to Vesta stabs Marquez clone, why?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;And was uploaded by someone who went by the moniker of &quot;HoundOfGod&quot;.&nbsp;&nbsp;The last thing I needed was a reminder of what had just happened, but curiosity led me onwards.<br />\tThe video started with a still image of Derrick Marquez staggering with a bloody broken blade sticking out of his kevlar body armor, the hilt of Denal&#039;s sword in his hand and an expression of pure fury on his face.&nbsp;&nbsp;The voiceover began in digitally distorted harsh and gravelly tones, it sounded male but for all I knew the narrator was actually female and using software to hide her identity.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Yesterday, Derrick Marquez, a commander in the Marquez Protectors Guild, was stabbed by one known simply as &#039;Denal&#039;.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;The image changed to a street camera view of Denal, from one of our first days in Vesta.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Denal arrived on Vesta over a month ago with three companions, Aniya,&quot; a picture of Aniya in her spacesuit was shown, &quot;Cole,&quot; the raven&#039;s portrait, &quot;and Argentum.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Me, obviously.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;The four of them had slain a pirate in self-defense near Ceres a couple weeks prior to their arrival at Vesta, who just happened to be a clone of a prominent V.P. in the Directorate hierarchy.&nbsp;&nbsp;How ironic that they chose Vesta to escape reprisal for slaying a clone?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;If only we&#039;d known, Aniya and Cole might have been doing hard labor instead of lying in some morgue waiting to be recycled into raw nutrients.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;The official report by house Marquez is that during negotiations with the commander over insurance premiums Denal suddenly slew Aniya and Cole with pressure darts loaded with cyanide, then charged Derrick with a Ji&agrave;n sword.&nbsp;&nbsp;The blade then broke attempting to penetrate the commander&#039;s bodysuit and Denal fled.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;I did not need to be reminded, as the video stated this I pulled the sheets closer together over my eyes.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;However, there is one major problem with this account, after fleeing the scene Denal ran straight to territory covered by house Wolf and pled for asylum.&nbsp;&nbsp;And what&#039;s more he had a video recording of the encounter taken via a mini-camera in one of his vest buttons.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;So that answered where Denal was, hiding behind his lupine girlfriend&#039;s camouflage and gun.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;The following video has been determined to be the original footage with no editing, for the simple reason that he had no time to edit while running for his life.&quot;<br />\tThe video suddenly shifted to a scene of Derrick Marquez sitting at the far end of a table from the camera, to either side of the camera one could barely see some black feathered wings or furred paws resting on the table.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Now, I&#039;m sure you can understand why we had to increase your rates so drastically, considering your present safety concerns.&quot;<br />\t&quot;Yeah right,&quot; the person wearing the camera apparently spoke, given how the image jostled and I instantly recognized it as Denal.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;You just want to suck every spare qcoin we own out of us.&quot;<br />\t&quot;There are additional expenses racked up by fending off bounty hunters after your hide.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Derrick continued when Denal stopped speaking.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;And your foxy friend is no longer paying zir share of the extra costs, so you three have to take up the slack.&quot;<br />\t&quot;What?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;The camera view shifted to the left, just barely showing Aniya expressing disbelief at this statement.&nbsp;&nbsp;&quot;Argen&#039;s not paying?&quot;<br />\t&quot;We have a bit of an agreement with zir employers.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;The camera shifted back to Derrick for a few moments.<br />\t&quot;That does not mean that we have to pay for zim.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;It shifted to the right this time, showing Cole gripping the table tightly in all four sets of talons.<br />\t&quot;I say it does.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Derrick stood up and popped the strap holding his sidearm in place.<br />\t&quot;He&#039;s going to shoot, get him!&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;It was hard to tell but it looked like Denal was scrambling across the table sword drawn and pouncing on Derrick.&nbsp;&nbsp;It was moving fast but I could just barely make out several sounds of darts flying before the jaguar was thrown down to the ground with the sword embedded in his bodysuit.<br />\t&quot;Argh, you idiot.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp;Derrick shoved Denal loudly off of himself, there was a snap of metal breaking as he did so.&nbsp;&nbsp;When Denal landed he saw Aniya and Cole lying prone on the floor, their bodies twitching and their mouths filling with foam.&nbsp;&nbsp;There was a sharp intake of breath as Denal noted the darts in their necks, the glazed lifeless look on their faces.&nbsp;&nbsp;Then he ran, deeper into the bowels of the ship, no doubt hoping that he could lose the no doubt relentless pursuer just standing up behind him.<br />\tI stopped the video at that point.&nbsp;&nbsp;First Denal was not only a lech but a murderer as well, then he was an innocent framed for the deaths of our closest friends by a corrupt Guildleader&#039;s progeny?&nbsp;&nbsp;What was truth and what was lies?&nbsp;&nbsp;How could I decide?<br /></span>","pools_count":1,"title":"The Pride of Parahumans, Chapters 6-10","deleted":"f","public":"t","mimetype":"application/msword","pagecount":"1","rating_id":"1","rating_name":"Mature","ratings":[{"content_tag_id":"3","name":"Violence","description":"Mild violence","rating_id":"1"}],"submission_type_id":"12","type_name":"Writing - Document","guest_block":"f","friends_only":"f","comments_count":"0","views":"30","sales_description":null,"forsale":"f","digitalsales":"f","printsales":"f","digital_price":""}